Here we see the early stages of a cone tornado (right), and a rainy “bear’s cage” wall cloud from a separate mesocyclone (left), bracketing a CG strike from the main core, all in the same large and complex supercell. Observation of the wall cloud in lightning and Union City town lights revealed that it was rotating. Meanwhile, as the cone moved away to the northeast, toward an area just west of Yukon, a broader tornado would form from the more distant, bowl-shaped lowering between the cone and the CG. Both northeastern/right-side tornadoes were cyclonic and separate, despite being from the same elongated mesocyclone and updraft shear zone. The much closer Union City mesocyclone at left soon would present another cone tornado. What a complicated, hazardous, tornadic and pretornadic mess! It’s not hard to see why storm observers who try to get super close can become either confused or too fixated on one area, especially at night. Best to back off and put the entire potential action area between oneself and the lightning-producing core. That positioning tactic has two major spotting benefits: 1) safety, from locating oneself out of the way of all this, either upshear (behind the storm), abeam (parallel to its motion), or something in between, and 2) a wider, more holistic view of multiple dangerous processes, to better conceptualize, document, and when possible, report what’s happening. [Even then, it took a hardcore veteran storm observer like me a couple of precious minutes to fully grasp what was going on.] Briefly, all three tornadoes were at least somewhat visible at once (unfortunately, without good lightning for a photo). That almost certainly couldn’t have been true if I had foolishly tucked myself somewhere within the mesocyclonic merry-go-round.
2 NNE Minco OK (19 May 24) Looking N
35.3393, -97.9337