May 22nd report

We started the day in Hays and had a broad target of N Oklahoma in mind. We drove the 300+ miles down into northern Oklahoma, and stopped to top off the fuel tanks around Orlando, Oklahoma. We could see storms on the radar south of Oklahoma City, and so wanted to ensure we had a full tank.

A storm was developing to our SW, and quickly became severe warned, with a nice supercell shape on radar. We headed to the west of town and observed a pair of wall clouds. The storm was then given a tornado warning, but seemed to struggle to organise further, having looked very promising for a time. It was moving into cooler air. We tracked it to the east and then north, heading towards Perry, but it continued to look fairly poor by this stage. After heading east towards Morrison, we stopped and noted new development to the south-west. We headed back to the west and stopped west of Perry to observe a good shelf cloud - having got some close CG lightning before this from another storm.

The storm was tending to become less potent and so we decided to book a motel in Enid and headed there for the night. New storms developed south of the storm we'd observed, and went on to produce some brief tornadoes. Further to the north-east, more numerous tornadic storms developed today with several tornadoes - some looked impressive but many were not especially well formed or easily seen/photographed. Even so, a number of chasers observed and documented them - good interceptions.

We headed to Applebee's in Enid for dinner. Tomorrow looks like another chase day, with storms likely across parts of the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles, into Kansas, and western Oklahoma. It may be a rather messy picture but with some embedded gems - we'll work out a plan in the morning!

Pics below from today.