2001 May 27

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Home > USA > 2001

Tornado Alley 2001 Tours: May 27

Structure & Lightning movies (click thumbnail for wmv movie]:

[~2.5 mb ]

[1.24 mb]

[0.85 mb]

Those who were fortunate to remain ahead of this storm were treated to a beautiful and powerful storm complex of a magnitude seldom seen, even on the Plains. During our encounter, totalling 6 incredible hours, we observed the most stunning storm structure, intense lightning and fearsome straight-line (non-tornadic) winds ever. The storm complex was enormous and wrought very substantial damage over almost the entire state of Oklahoma and a large portion of north Texas.

An HP supercell notch is backlit by a vivid CG bolt. This storm was moving south-east towards our group at 70km/h.

This is the eastern-most cell of the complex, and which developed a magnificent circular structure with multiple striations and a shelf cloud that was literally hugging the ground.

This still was grabbed from video, looking west. The anvil at this time became highly electrified. We enountered an exceptionally violent lightning barrage soon after.

At 1/2 zoom, showing an incredible sculpted shelf cloud to our west. We made it to Lawton just as the complex hit with winds estimated at over 100 miles per hour.