Canadian, Texas Cyclic Tornadic Supercell

Wes Adkins and myself targeted the northeastern Texas Panhandle on May 27th, ending up near Moobetie by early afternoon.  From a road side rest stop, we watched what initially appeared to be a multicell thunderstorm initiate to our north near Canadian, TX.  This thunderstorm consolidated during the next hour, and developed a strong reflectivity gradient on its southern flank based on the Amarillo NEXRAD.  This quickly became our target storm, and we departed for Canadian.  The supercell appeared to have the potential to take a hard right toward the southeast, so we cautiously approached from the south.  However, it became obvious with time that the updraft was virtually stationary, so we entered the southern side of Canadian and watched a wall cloud evolve.  A strong area of low-level rotation developed northeast of the wall cloud, on the north side of town, and a tornado emerged within minutes.  As the tornado rotated around the northwest side of the low-level mesocyclone, it grew into a large cylindrical cone, possibly a half mile wide.  The tornado then moved along the western edge of the mesocyclone and entered its rope stage before completely dissipating.

Three separate wall clouds then developed after the tornado, each of which appeared to have tornadic potential.  The southwestern wall cloud came close to producing, but similar to the first tornado observed, an area of strong cloud base rotation developed to its northeast, went through an occlusion, and produced another tornado.  This process happened a third time, with another brief tornado being observed.  However, the third occlusion wrapped a large amount of rain cooled air into the base of the supercell, and the tornado potential finally came to an end.  We moved south of Canadian after the final occlusion took place, satisfied with the multi-hour cyclic tornadic supercell we observed.