Wednesday - May 5, 1993 - Northern Texas Panhandle/Oklahoma Panhandle/Southwest Kansas

I will always remember May 5, 1993 as the day that I had my first big success in storm chasing... alone. Yes, it was pretty much a no-brainer of a day in that there was going to be a lot of severe weather from west Texas northward into the central and northern Plains. But... it was nice to go to my target area and make the decisions I did on my own.

A large upper level low was located over Utah at 12z with strong 500 MB winds rotating through New Mexico and Colorado. The stronger winds were forecast to just edge out into the high plains during the day. A deep low pressure area was in eastern Colorado and very moist and unstable air had already worked northward in advance of a dryline that would not move east of the panhandles during the day.

At mid-afternoon... I had just crossed from the Oklahoma panhandle into southwest Kansas when first storm development started in the northern Texas panhandle. I didn’t wait for other storms to form in Kansas and started back southwestward.

As I dropped south on highway 94 from Hooker, OK... a very impressive supercell was to my southwest. It was already producing a large tornado... and from spotter reports... it was still in the Texas panhandle. The storm continued to produce as it crossed into Oklahoma to the south of Guymon.

The tornado dissipated southeast of Guymon while I held a position about 9 miles east of the city. A new funnel cloud started forming with my storm when I started hearing tornado reports from another supercell that was about 25 miles to the west. This storm would produce a total of two tornadoes... each that I saw from a long distance. In this picture... you can see the nearby funnel and the tornado very near the horizon with the other storm in the background.

Yes, I would have liked to chase both.... but a great show was beginning to take shape near me. This was one of the first times I ever looked almost straight up into a strongly rotating updraft. I moved to the southeast a bit and watched as the next tornado formed. This classic elephant trunk tornado stayed in open fields to my north and then took on some “twisty” shapes before weakening.

I moved back north toward Hooker which pulled me away from the updraft enough that I could get a good view of it... absolutely amazing!

The next tornado wasn’t far off and formed in Oklahoma just south of the Kansas border. It immediately became very large. Another view. I continued to go north as the storm moved into Kansas...but darkness was starting to have an impact on my photography. I wish I would have been able to capture the next tornado as it developed just northeast of the Hooker tornado. For several minutes... there were two very large tornadoes on the ground at the same time. The last one I watched only in lightning flashes as it came very close to Moscow, KS.

Being inexperienced and lacking the quality of data that we have today... I called the chase off when it got totally dark. I was still very happy about the events of the day... but if it happened tomorrow I would now have the ability to continue chasing what was a long-tracked, violent tornado.