DanLarsen34

I’d call this a tornado emergency for Golden City. Well defined couplet and debris ball as it approaches the city.

This storm SE of Jasper is textbook. Strong/violent tornado in progress.

Scratch that. Spotted confirmed tornado with this storm.

This storm east of Tulsa has been on the brink of producing a strong/violent tornado for a while. Velocity couplet is finally catching up to the reflectivity presentation. Still no tornado yet, but it’s getting close.

Possible debris ball forming east of Carytown.

Already up to 14 reports, mostly across the moderate risk area. Going to be a heck of a lot more reports that are going to filter in too unfortunately.

This is East of Pawnee, OK.

Think they need to pull the trigger on a tornado emergency. This thing is over a mile wide based on what I just saw from a chaser on twitter.

Yikes

Things have gotten messy by Tulsa. However, there are a few well-defined updrafts there. If storms can continue to merge and the low level jet kicks in soon, it’s not hard to imagine things really ramping up.

Just saw confirmation from a chaser on twitter of a violent tornado in progress near Castle.

The southern cell is about to produce something big.

PDS watch out for NE Oklahoma and parts of Missouri.

Uh oh...

These are the cells I was referring to.

Storm near Lawton doesn't look particularly well organized yet. Meanwhile, we are probably going to need a PDS watch for NE Oklahoma soon. Several storms have breached the cap south of OKC and appear to be maintaining themselves as they track to the NE.

Guys, part of the PDS watch is currently under a general thunderstorm risk in the SPC outlook. There's something that's probably never happened before! lol.

The way this wet from a general thunderstorm area in the Tuesday 1 AM Day 2 outlook to a PDS watch with at least a moderate risk is something I don't think I've ever seen. Only parallel I can think of the historical examples i've studied is May 3, 1999. Not saying anything like this going to happen by any stretch, but it's really rare that we've seen the SPC have to escalate their risk area like this in a 24-48 hour period.

Holy crap is this escalating quickly. We got a freaking PDS watch in central Oklahoma now.

It’s something how quickly we went from this being a general thunderstorm area a day or two ago to suddenly looking like a dangerous set-up. Quincy Vagell mentioned on twitter last night that the one of the few May analogs for today was May 9, 2003. That was a day that produced over 30 tornadoes, including an F-4 in the OKC metro. Difference he mentioned is that height rises are greater this time. Could be a day where, even if just one cell goes, it could go big.

Patrick Marsh’s discussion on twitter about this set-up really puts in perspective just how close we were to something like a generational outbreak yesterday. The sounding from OKC showed an environment on par with that sampled just in front of the Tuscaloosa Birmingham EF4, as well as several other major outbreaks. This will be THE case study that everyone will want to understand because it largely undermined everything we thought we knew about high-end outbreak days.

Watch tomorrow pull a May 3! Lol. It would sure fit the theme of our set-ups recently. Know others have said this too, but it really seems like our high-end outlook days are performing like slight/enhanced, and our sneaky 5%-10% days are playing like moderate/high risks. Today basically played like a moderate in the cold core target in NE Kansas.

Check this one out a little earlier in Missouri.

This hits at a really difficult issue. Is the SPC better off potentially underplaying a threat that could, if it’s ceiling is realized, result in an outbreak with several long-track violent tornadoes? Or are they better off doing what they did yesterday, when 95% of the community agreed this looked like a major outbreak, but end up overestimating the event? As much as the science has advanced, they still have a very difficult job. I think they’d have been criticized more harshly by everyone if they issued a moderate risk, and this turned out to be an event with a 100+ tornadoes and 5+ violent tornadoes, something yesterday could have done had a few minor things played out differently.