Duke, Bobby, rds, Boat (others who are interested) OU's RaXPol radar in the field

The University of Oklahoma has had their RaXPol radar in the field during the severe setups on the Plains the past few days. The images they are getting are pretty damn cool. They got the entire life cycle of the Selden, KS tornado yesterday.



@raxpol

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A few preliminary looks at yesterday's data: First, the Selden tornado in its mature phase had several wrapping rainbands just outside of the main circulation, with many coherent subvortices evident on the outer periphery which were confirmed visually. LINK

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@raxpol

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As the main circulation became rain-wrapped and gradually weakened to the west, a new cyclonic/anticyclonic pair of circulations developed to the east, and the anticyclonic circulation became weakly tornadic, with the ground swirl narrowly missing RaXPol and crew by ~30 m! LINK

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A gif with radar loops of a tornadic storm (I'm not sure if it is the same one as above). The blip in the middle of the gif is when they had to relocate because they were directly in the path of the tornado. They also caught a satellite tornado on radar that passed over them.



They are down today for a scheduled day off, but should be back out tomorrow for the Enhanced Risk (currently) setups tomorrow and Thursday.

The Plains tornado season appears to be back and nearing high gear.