Seldom does a supercell look more like the classical textbook depiction than this. One clearly can see the wide updraft base across the lower middle (with small wall cloud), forward-flank core behind the trees at right, flanking line and tilted towers in the left middle half, an “inflow tail” spreading anvil above, and even overturning “knuckles” between the top of the flanking towers and anvil. A continuous connection with other, earlier-developing storms to the north, near Wichita, isn’t visible here, making this supercell a “tail-end Charlie” as well. Seconds after I shot this, a brightly forked CG lightning discharge from the anvil hit one of the trees at leftmost rear, ensuring the rest of my viewing at this location would be from inside my mobile Faraday cage. The storm soon assumed a heavy-precip “stack of plates” structure, dropping damaging hail in a swath southeastward through Ponca City and western Osage County.
2 NW Braman OK (15 May 24) Looking WNW
36.9327, -97.3549