This is what storm chasing is all about, when everything comes together!

The tornado continued for a few minutes not moving much and it continued to miss everything in it's path. I was very thankful that no one was loosing property or getting injured!

Just before the tornado began to rope out it quickly shrunk in size and started to become skinny.

I was so busy shooting video I almost forgot to grab a few stills! Fwef!

The tornado began to lift.

And just as quickly as it had all started, it was over! The tornado was no more and storm engulfed the wall cloud and wrapped everything in rain. I quickly moved down the road to keep ahead of this storm as it rapidly began to change into an HP monster.

The now officially tornadic supercell (since it officially has a history of tornadoes) morphed into a high precipitation because and began to wrap itself with rain. Unfortunately that meant my options were now limited as I was not going to fight with potentially rain wrapped tornadoes and monster hail.

I shot some video of a skinny rope tornado that formed and was quickly sucked into the storm. The storm by point was just looking mean and it was still tracking east into less favorable terrain. It was at this point I made the decision to bail and head back west where fresh storms were forming. This was a critical mistake/learning experience. Never leave a storm that has a history of producing tornadoes because it will likely keep producing them!!! Several storm chasers who stuck with this storm saw two more stove-pipe style tornadoes. Darn I should have stuck with it!

SEL0 URGENT - IMMEDIATE BROADCAST REQUESTED TORNADO WATCH NUMBER 190 NWS STORM PREDICTION CENTER NORMAN OK 205 PM CDT WED MAY 19 2010 THE NWS STORM PREDICTION CENTER HAS ISSUED A TORNADO WATCH FOR PORTIONS OF MUCH OF OKLAHOMA EFFECTIVE THIS WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON AND EVENING FROM 205 PM UNTIL 1000 PM CDT. ...THIS IS A PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION... DESTRUCTIVE TORNADOES...LARGE HAIL TO 3.5 INCHES IN DIAMETER... THUNDERSTORM WIND GUSTS TO 70 MPH...AND DANGEROUS LIGHTNING ARE POSSIBLE IN THESE AREAS. THE TORNADO WATCH AREA IS APPROXIMATELY ALONG AND 55 STATUTE MILES NORTH AND SOUTH OF A LINE FROM 40 MILES SOUTH OF GAGE OKLAHOMA TO 40 MILES EAST SOUTHEAST OF MCALESTER OKLAHOMA. FOR A COMPLETE DEPICTION OF THE WATCH SEE THE ASSOCIATED WATCH OUTLINE UPDATE (WOUS64 KWNS WOU0). REMEMBER...A TORNADO WATCH MEANS CONDITIONS ARE FAVORABLE FOR TORNADOES AND SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS IN AND CLOSE TO THE WATCH AREA. PERSONS IN THESE AREAS SHOULD BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR THREATENING WEATHER CONDITIONS AND LISTEN FOR LATER STATEMENTS AND POSSIBLE WARNINGS. DISCUSSION...TSTMS EXPECTED TO FORM IN THE NEXT HOUR OR SO INVOF SLOWLY RETREATING W/E OUTFLOW BOUNDARY IN W CNTRL OK. OTHER STORMS ALSO MAY FORM A BIT LATER NEAR INTERSECTION OF OUTFLOW BOUNDARY WITH CONFLUENCE LINE IN CNTRL OK...AND IN MORE STRONGLY HEATED ENVIRONMENT NEAR WARM FRONT IN SE OK /REF MCD 623/. GIVEN STRENGTH OF WIND FIELD...EXPECTATION OF CONTINUED LOW LVL DESTABILIZATION...AND EVENTUAL ONSET OF MID LVL COOLING/ASCENT WITH UPR IMPULSE NOW IN THE WRN TX PANHANDLE...SETUP APPEARS FAVORABLE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF STRONG SUPERCELLS. ONE OR TWO OF THESE MAY BECOME LONG-LIVED...AND YIELD A COUPLE STRONG TORNADOES...AS THEY INTERACT WITH BACKED LOW LVL FLOW NEAR OUTFLOW BOUNDARY AND/OR WARM FRONT. AVIATION...TORNADOES AND A FEW SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS WITH HAIL SURFACE AND ALOFT TO 3.5 INCHES. EXTREME TURBULENCE AND SURFACE WIND GUSTS TO 60 KNOTS. A FEW CUMULONIMBI WITH MAXIMUM TOPS TO 550. MEAN STORM MOTION VECTOR 26030.

This was the anvil of the next storm I had my eye on, a wonderful supercell just a little south of the prior storm.

Man this storm sure was gorgeous! But it also had a cold look developing. It's hard to explain, but the coloration, the banding in the clouds and other things really show that this storm was just full of cold air aloft.

This is one of my favorite photos of all time. It has everything that makes a supercell perfect minus a tornado. You can see wall cloud with banding back towards to the storms precipitation. There is also a clear vaulted region, green colour emanating from the main updraft and an RFD kicking around a smaller subcore region in the background. Also to point out, the white glow behind the wall cloud is not from lighter precipitation, it's actually baseball sized hail. This entire storms was strongly rotation and slowly coming towards me. The inflow at my back was also howling, winds were feeding into the storm at around 60 km/h! You just don't get that kind of inflow in Southern Ontario!!!

The whole storm did a second cycle and the wall cloud came back together. At about this time needed to move since the storm was heading for me and I would have been cored had I stayed put.

I flew down the interstate and stopped in the clear. The cloud of scud off to the left was trying to become a tornado but never did succeed.

Check out the banded inflow to the right of the storm. Incredible structure!

The storm by this point was now going through a phase change and quickly doing a meso-replacement cycle. There was plenty of mixing and spinning on the edge of the inflow and a small funnel cloud quickly developed. There were also reports on the radio now of hail to the size of softballs!

This sure was a dirty looking funnel cloud just above the stop sign. Images don't do it justice, it was spinning like a little top but refused to grow any longer and extend to the ground. A number of the tour groups were frantic and looking to see if they could see any debris swirls at the surface and someone on skywarn reported a touch down. I'm still calling this a funnel cloud and not a tornado! I did not see anything to indicate otherwise.

The storm slowly kept marching east with the dryline bulge behind it growing. The inflow structure by this point was becoming ragged and it was increasingly getting dark.

I decided to venture up the road into the storms cold outflow just behind core and found part of the reason it was not producing any substantial tornadoes. The air here was around 5C or 41 degrees, it was freezing! There was all sorts of hail for forming and the storms was constantly gobbling up this cold air! There were also hail drifts all over the road and on the shoulder. Some of the drifts were up to 15cm / 6" deep in places.

These photos just don't do the storm justice, I mean there was so much hail it was ridiculous.