Tornado Outbreak of May 23-24, 2020

The May 23-24, 2020 Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak is considered the most destructive Oklahoma outbreak on record, with several strong-violent tornadoes and numerous fatalities that occurred from the night of the 23rd of May until the morning of the following day.

Meteorological Synopsis
An upper level storm system associated with an upper level trough came down from Canada on May 22nd and rapidly intensified and went negative tilted. With that, in the lower levels, a surface low rapidly formed over north-eastern New Mexico and produced numerous severe thunderstorms with damaging winds in excess of 70 mph and golfball size hail over the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma.

An isolated supercell encountered an outflow boundary left by another storm to its north and produced the first tornado some time after midnight on north-western Oklahoma. This first tornado caused also the first four fatalities of the storm.

As morning progressed, the surface low neepened and moved over south-western Kansas. Air was extremely unstable, with over 5000 J/kg in CAPE, and this, combined with an unexistent CAP and over 350 m2/s2 in low level SRH, made the enviroment perfect for the early development of supercells.

The first ones formed over north-western Oklahoma and put down the first tornadoes in the morning, followed by a series of lonely supercells over western Oklahoma.. As the afternoon arrived, the storms kept getting worse and stronger, putting down several more tornadoes before dark. During the night, one tornado touched down and went on to destroy areas near Canton and the town of Wakita. At the same time, two supercells to the south converged, forming one big supercell, that produced one tornado, the last one of the outbreak, during the morning hours of May 24th.