Day 3: A Brief Tornado and Some Beautiful Structure

Yesterday we headed northwest into the Plains of Oklahoma (finally!). We started chasing a cell near Watonga, OK that had beautiful structure early on. The RFD caused a clear slot in the clouds that looked like a hole into sunshine.

Ella thought it was pretty too.

We headed closer to the storm to get a better view and mother nature was kind enough to provide us with a brief tornado. It was really interesting because there was this skinny horizontal funnel cloud that had a debris cloud that was pretty far displaced from the funnel itself. This is caused by the RFD pushing the debris cloud away from the funnel itself. It was a very brief, weak tornado, but a tornado nonetheless. 

As the storm was dissipating, created this beautiful scene

Once that storm died, another storm began going up right in front of us. We started heading southeast to get to a different cell, but the incredible convective motion of the closer storm was too hard to ignore so we stayed on it. It was spectacular.