We left Dumas (TX) late morning and trundled southeastwards towards Wheeler (TX), stopping at Shamrock (TX) for lunch and a refuel. A lot of chaser convergence in the area, surprising number of Brits too! Had a chat with the Netweather team and Dave Ewoldt, before lifting a little north to Wheeler (TX) once again to re-assess.
By this stage, a few storms had began to fire out west, and were rapidly intensifying on just a couple of radar scans. We dropped south to McLean (TX), and parked up just south of town to watch this supercell eventually produce a tornado to our west! After a few minutes it began to get rain-wrapped, so we followed it north and caught it during it's roping out stage just southwest of McLean. There was also some sizeable hail on the grass verges here too.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0MilJFiAmlKq6JapS9ndZvnEZAOGGNfr17fRjLEXtezw-zdvQIqepgom0gw28oiwoQarfd0iUhfxXG17AsYMx-T0dtkKbYt8hhgxH82TdEdemIc2ql1tZZbnldtB_m5-3ujN23t_g-Ec/s640/SC2017-3.jpg) |
Tornado beginning to form southwest of McLean (TX) |
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkeAiLXbi085YgoWeiSrxE_4JgCea40Jg7fRIH5P4xrCZVnCxMhB6APPwvEMxj_-aZ1bDsbHBc4b-4r6aFw4GrimcglUBaAJERMJ4Yg9LBPEPmqUWZT9pqZKEAcv2rK9ftCmxYqPyxB3o/s640/SC2017-4.jpg) |
Tornado in progress southwest of McLean (TX), beginning to have wrapping rain curtains |
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi50Nr4ObCcCUWllpn0-K9eU27_4FapnQF0yyo8peCH0KwGD1lpvmCtAkc6XcIJZGHgf-EmVWThQUw8Ic84GqtN-232ufRvFtQKADUl5_0rV3x0jpfEQxcqJs3ouRE6m5oQhZHyxgJd2Z8/s640/SC2017-5.jpg) |
Large hail on the ground just south of McLean (TX) |
Now the tricky and frustrating part - there were two potentially tornadic supercells to chase, both to our east and moving to the northeast at 35-40mph (i.e. away from us) so we then spent several hours playing catch up, trying to get ahead and look into the storms. The northern storm produced a large, rain-wrapped tornado near Wheeler (TX), while the southern storm went to produce a damaging tornado (again, rain-wrapped) near Elk City (OK) - we missed both of these due to the logistical issues (not that they would have been photogenic anyway), but we stopped a couple of times to watch the frequent lightning as darkness fell in the evening, before spending the night in Lawton (OK).
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi83NSOU-KkuTbGvAgWJjVlLXHu0YaP7ntqgpmtwNcr02fXERWfv9muxwcCwnosbrCa4bsnWDNon-MXmXqMQiUcal5DRYithntJkzzoQ5DEMaARQZ5golXwjN8wRVGapjAtK7b9N6zYClg/s640/radarscope.jpg) |
Tornado warning (red polygon) for the supercell thunderstorm, with our location (blue circle) |
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzGhjEWukeDI0iG2TrpQBB8RBa8ldtAgVCeOFJ83U5efvMopYsixxT5yuYT9WZk4Rti_qm1JupKC5OvGbPwst68kpOPgE_Yg10bdGg-fCKUbRseGmr8rK-eV4qDJQ4e83I_s3NGwagtzQ/s640/Screen+Shot+2017-05-17+at+00.19.10.png) |
Day 3 GPS tracker |
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