Saturday 17th June 2023 - Panhandles (Moderate Risk)

This would be the last day of Tour 4 with the last 2 days looking like down days with the ejecting system moving far off to the east. A similar set up to the 15th but with a much lower Tornado Risk and the Moderate Risk was for a damaging wind event 45% Hatched which would race across Northern Oklahoma later in the evening. Once again we had ample moisture in place and a Low Pressure nosing into the Panhandles from New Mexico for 21z. The Triple point this time was a lot harder to pin down due to a line of Severe Storms already formed off the Raton Mesa which was racing into the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles and SE Colorado/SW Kansas. The trick today would be to find the discrete cells which went up in front of the line before the line catches them. After a quick lunch in Shattuck we headed south and west towards Canadian. Two Supercells were forming, one over Guymon and the other near Pampa, we opted for the one further south as it had a much better parameter space between it and the severe squall line marching east further north. Our first look at the Storm near Miami was of a stunning structured barber pole LP Supercell, the storm to the north from our vantage point looked like an atomic bomb had gone off as well and that one gained a Tornado warning pretty early on. Thankfully no pictures were coming in of any Tornadoes and both storms had an equal chance at producing still. Huge Cg Lightning discharges were raining out of our storm but something was missing to kick this storm on, it looked very pretty but it was clearly struggling for some reason. Hours ticked by, the huge HP Supercell to the North kept its tornado warnings whereas ours just slowly moved east still looking pretty but with only minor mid level rotation. Finally as it crossing into Western Oklahoma to Northern Storm started to kill ours off so we called it a day and headed to Weatherford to await the now Severe warned line to our west to slam the hotel.

Some Pics of our day.