April 10, 2001


On Monday, April 9, the SPC issued a moderate risk for severe weather for western Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle on Tuesday. At first the forecast was not looking as dire as it did on April 6, as the cap today was forecast to be weaker than it was on the 6th. As soon as the low and high level cloudiness flooded into the southern Plains on Monday evening, I had a feeling we would be having another bust on our hands in the southern Plains. Throughout the day on Tuesday, it became clear that the high overcast would be slow to clear and the dryline would be slow to move out of New Mexico, so I decided to stay home again. Storms did not fire until sunset anyway so it turned out to be a good decision not to go out today.

This time there was some interesting weather in the OKC area. Elevated thunderstorms moved into Norman around midnight. These storms trained over the area for more than two hours - bringing copious amounts of rain and significantly cooling the air near the surface. By 2am on Wednesday morning, there was a pool of rain-cooled air in central Oklahoma. Several supercells developed along the eastern boundary of this cool pool in Garvin, McClain, and Pottawatomie Counties around 3am - with one supercell producing a tornado near Harjo in Pottwatomie County.


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