“Early” in the title refers to the stage of this tornado, not the hour. We just had finished viewing the dying stages of the “Cashion” tornado to our northwest in faint lightning and artificial light, suspected a new cyclic mesocyclone was forming to our northeast, and rapidly received this confirmation! The Crescent/Mulhall tornado was the 18th spawned by the “Storm B” supercell alone, and the 11th and last we observed on this astounding outbreak day. The condensation cone just had developed to the northeast within the preceding minute or less—barely enough time to set up my tripod and camera for this, the only film-slide photograph I was able to get of the tornado. In fact, I know of no other actual photographs of it (as opposed to video frames). The fortuitous cloud-to-ground stroke occurred from the flanking line of the new mesocyclone. All other lightning we saw was fainter, buried in heavy precip to the tornado’s northeast or north. Within seconds, the visible vortex assumed wedge shape, growing to half a mile wide (based on damage survey). As we zigzagged northeastward to keep up, it would swell to well over a mile across, with F4 damage on the north (weaker!) side of the tornado, and mobile-radar-detected subvortices larger than the quarter-mile-wide Spencer, SD, F4 tornado that I had seen the year before.
1 E Cashion OK (3 May 99) Looking NE
35.8006, -97.6565