may 16, 2003
watched storms from my backyard


The intense low responsible for yesterday's storms in the panhandles would move over central Oklahoma, where it would fill and become vertically stacked. I was expecting storms today to develop in eastern Oklahoma and rapidly race eastward. Since I had errands to run here in Norman anyway, and I was expecting Shawn and Ed to arrive tonight, I decided to stay home and plan for a possible get together at my apartment that night. So I called up Shawn, Stacey, and Jay and let them all know of my plans - which included going to the Stormtrack Picnic in Piedmont the next day. Jay let me know that he decided to stay in Austin for a few more days as his pet was slowly recovering. While I was on the phone with Jay, we started talking about The Weather Channel, and it dawned on me that my TV was still off. So I turn on the TV, and much to my surprise, I saw a scroll which said that Oklahoma County was under a tornado warning!!! Needless to say, I was quite shocked, as the convection I was seeing out my window was rather low topped and not overly impressive. So both Jay and I pulled up radar images, and saw that numerous storms had developed near the center of the vertically stacked low, which was centered very close to Norman. Jay in fact remarked how the radar image appeared to indicate a big hurricane right over Norman. Although these cells were triggering numerous tornado warnings, they were about 30 to 45 minutes north of my location, and I was fearful the show would be over by the time I got there. Radar was indicating more impressive looking cells developing in eastern Oklahoma, but these were racing away from me so I decided to proceed with my original plans. Sure enough, the low had moved east of the area by 3pm, driving down a bunch of cumulus and scud down from the northwest. The scud actually became quite picturesque as it became illuminated in a spooky orange glow towards sunset, and I spent that evening attempting to get some time lapse footage of the orange scud as it surged southeast.


A rainbow arches across the early evening sky in Norman OK just before the sun sinks below the horizon


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