Day 16: Burlington, CO to Elk City, OK

It was a long drive south today, to Oklahoma, where some isolated supercells were forecast to form. We made up some time in the morning so stopped at the Windmill Museum at Shattuck, OK on the way:

We had a gas stop next to this old motel in Arnett, OK:

A storm went up not far from where we were so we pulled in at Dead Indian Creek to see what happened. It slowly developed into a supercell, but it was getting late in the day and the window of interest was closing fast. It visibly split a few times, but contained little rain. We were sweating buckets here as it was over 95°F:

We decided to head towards the storm, still a good 20-30 miles distant to see what it could do. By the time we got within 10 miles a new, much better-looking storm formed to our south, partially obscured by the mammatus from our cell:

We drove after this new cell, which quickly became the main storm. Behind us, the original storm was still throwing out dangerous lightning, starting a large wildfire behind us:

Meanwhile, the storm in front was producing numerous shear funnels:

As sunset approached, the storm became a bit more outflow dominant and the risk of tornadoes diminished. It made for a spectacular scene though as frequent CG lightning hit the ground with the sun setting behind: