This short-lived, slender tornado danced across the verdant springtime prairies of western Oklahoma for just a couple of minutes, kicking up some thin puffs of dust, but otherwise causing no damage and doing nothing noteworthy besides posing briefly for the lens. The parent supercell didn’t produce any tornadoes until after another storm to its SW had merged with it, resulting in a short line of storms with the remnant supercell embedded. What’s left of the updraft base is visible here. Often such a process will either kill a supercell or dump huge loads of rain and hail into its inflow and updraft regions, messing up its structure. That happened, but not before this storm spawned a few brief tornadic spinups—this one being the longest lived. The observing day ended with a marvelous supercellular sunset south of here.
3 WSW Thomas OK (27 Mar 4) Looking W
35.7255, -98.8034Custer City Spinup
This short-lived, slender tornado danced across the verdant springtime prairies of western Oklahoma for just a couple of minutes, kicking up some thin puffs of dust, but otherwise causing no damage and doing nothing noteworthy besides posing briefly for the lens. The parent supercell didn’t produce any tornadoes until after another storm to its SW had merged with it, resulting in a short line of storms with the remnant supercell embedded. What’s left of the updraft base is visible here. Often such a process will either kill a supercell or dump huge loads of rain and hail into its inflow and updraft regions, messing up its structure. That happened, but not before this storm spawned a few brief tornadic spinups—this one being the longest lived. The observing day ended with a marvelous supercellular sunset south of here.
3 WSW Thomas OK (27 Mar 4) Looking W
35.7255, -98.8034