April 6, 2003 - Southwest Oklahoma 
  

 
Chase Account by: Jonathan Garner
 
Brian Thalken, Jim Kaiser, and I initially targeted the Ardmore, OK area late Sunday morning. The pattern today appeared quite favorable for supercells and possibly a few tornadoes, with a dryline/warm front intersection moving through Central Oklahoma, and a strong upper-level jet streak spreading east across the warm sector. Theoretically, we were hoping that cells which initiated off of the dryline would then move northeast, strengthen, and then cross the warm front, which would enhance their tornadic potential. However, things got going early today, with cells initiating by 11am in northern TX and southcentral OK. We got on a cell just north of Ardmore, OK and followed it east for an hour, but, plenty of other convection developed around this cell, and nothing was able to strengthen. As we were moving east, a storm with a severe t-storm warning was making its way northeast through Marshall County Oklahoma, which was 30 miles south of us. So we quickly made our way south, and by 12:50pm, we were approaching the base of this storm from the backside. 

As we drove south, we could see large hail along the side of the road, so we used a bit more caution when the intermittent periods of rain intensified. There was quite a bit of turbulence along the rear-flank of this storm, and the base was slowly starting to fill in with scud. We then parked a mile north of the rain-free base, and noticed excellent convergence taking place, with a hint of a broad scale circulation. In addition, we found numerous hail stones the size of golf balls along the side of the road we were parked along, with one stone having a diameter close to 3-4", flattened out like a pancake (due to its impact with the ground). What appeared to be a developing low-level mesocyclone soon dissipated, so we followed the cell northeast for awhile, albeit with much less enthusiasm. After a stop in Atoka, OK to check out data at a library, we decided to follow what was now a line of storms moving east toward Arkansas. It was obvious that this line of convection was for the most part pretty weak, so we called off the chase north of Paris, TX at about 3-4pm. This day might have turned out differently if the cap would have been a bit stronger, so that convection would have fired during peak daytime heating instead of 11am.