The Setup
It was a day before the official start of the Tempest Tours 2026 season, and Tour 1 was scheduled to start tomorrow on April 16, but there was a risk of severe storms just south of Oklahoma City, and this was in reach for us where we could chase and return to the hotel to have a good night's sleep before the beginning of the tour.
CAPE was at least a couple thousand Joules per kilogram, but the low-level winds (and, therefore, low-level shear) were a bit weak, so I expected linear storms.
The Chase
Sure enough, storms fired in south-central and southwest Oklahoma. We moved south on I-35 to find them. We were greeted immediately by some heavy rain and hail. We proceeded southward and were treated to a nice whale's mouth view of the underside of the shelf cloud. We continued driving and then veered west to catch a new storm that looked like it could be a little more supercellular.
We let this second storm go by us once we got close to it and could see that it had little chance of produing any tornadoes or giving us any notable structure. We were treated to a nice rainbow on the west side of the storm along with some nice lightning.
Wrap-up
Not a bad chase for a day before the tour.