2009 OKWeatherWatch
Storm Chase
Chase Days: 9
Total Miles: 2622.3
April 26 – 12:27
p.m. (8 hours 21 minutes) 64431 (370.2 miles) MAP
I thought the day could end up
messy so I intentionally waited until storms formed to see how the early part
evolved and then made a move. Several storms were severe and some were tornado
warned when I left the house. I passed up the storm that was moving up through Washita County because I wondered how many
options would be available that far southeast if the storm went belly-up. I
then came across storms near Woodward and Mooreland that had some severe
warnings but were on the downhill slide when I came across them. The storms in
western Ellis County had been rolling for a bit. They
looked a little strung out - but still had high reflectivity - so I thought
that would be the next best thing. Near and north of Gage....it was obvious
that these storms had become unbalanced and had some pretty good outflow
surging eastward. There was little to hold my interest....but there was one
core that passed about 10 miles north of Shattuck that had 60dbz up to about
40K when it crossed highway 283. I thought a couple of things here. One, that all the storms in this area (including those back
to western Roger Mills County)
were having outflow issues and two, that the core I saw likely produced some
baseballs. Not thinking that there was a near-term tornado threat - I headed to
the area north of Shattuck on a hail mission. At the exact same time I reached
the hail swath, the tornado warning was issued for Roger Mills and southeast Ellis Counties.
Had I stayed around Arnett... I would have been about
15 minutes from Roll. Now, I had an additional 20 minutes to add to that trip.
I busted back and probably could have made it to the river crossing in time -
but I think I would have lost glass doing it. I've gotten pretty selective in
what I'll lose glass over.... and this didn't seem to be a good case. I instead
went east toward Harmon. My undiagnosed electrical problems kicked in again at
this point and I blasted to Vici to find shelter from
the CG's so I could replace some fuses. I was dealing
with this when several people were able to view a brief period of condensation
to the ground with rotation west of Vici. I was busy
burning my fingers - again. I started back toward home, ignoring the next
developing shear near Roll that lead to another tornado warning. I was watching
the storms in southwest Oklahoma
and figured they would still be fairly interesting when they made it to the
central part of the state. Wrong again. The closer I got - the worse looking
the lead storm got as it moved through Caddo County.
I stopped near the Cherokee Truck Stop west of the Calumet
exit to try for some lightning shots in a chance to salvage the day. There were
some close CG's and a well framed (if I don't say so
myself) drilling rig in the foreground when one blasted the ground across the
interstate. Because of some earlier rain - I had just brought my camera
inside.... turning it off and back on again. I forgot that this "off,
on" move would change my stop setting which I had set for close CG's (F/22) and it went back to F/4. My great strike blew
out the center third of the image - worthless. At that point, I decided a drink
was in order and drove back home. Only to sit down and see
some of the early images of the Roll event. A good topper I thought.
April 25 – 1:13
p.m. (9 hours 47 minutes) (DS,CR) 64160 (271 miles) MAP / GALLERY
Supercell storms formed in western
Oklahoma
during the late afternoon. We
started out with electrical problems – making a stop in Weatherford for
some parts. While a permanent fix
wasn’t accomplished, a quick fix of switching between the AC and charging
the laptop got us through the rest of the day. This fix WON’T work when things
get hotter. The first storm we
targeted formed in northwest Greer County and tracked northeast toward us – splitting
several times as it entered southwest Custer County. We went through an area of estimated
golf ball size hail near Carpenter (while measuring 1.37 inch hail). We crossed the hail swath again between
Carpenter and Foss
Lake and ended up
measuring 2.96 inch hail. For
Christine (NWS OUN) that was along for the ride… this larger than
baseball size hail far exceeded the pea size hail which was the largest she had
seen in the past. Those neglected
people from California. We watched as decent structure evolved
and our storm eventually had nice rotation at cloud base – to the point
we thought we would see a tornado with it west of Custer City. This didn’t last very long and
soon our storm was on a steady slide downhill. Afterward, we redirected toward a storm
that was moving toward Weatherford.
This storm had some nice supercell structure
for a time – but it was well after sunset by this time and details of
individual features were hard to see.
I shot a few lightning pictures on the northwest side of Weatherford and
we returned to Okarche.
April 18 – 1:27
p.m. (6 hours 41 minutes) 63544 (264.5 miles) MAP / GALLERY
The primary target was southwest Kansas.
Again… this was farther than I wanted to go on a day chase between
work days. Instead, I played around
with severe storms that formed in northwest Oklahoma. My Oklahoma
target was Woods County
and I was headed there when a smaller storm attracted my attention near Canton. This storm had nice structure at times
but was never able to intensify very much.
I followed it into eastern Major
County before checking
out some other storms moving in from the west. These storms provided a few photo
opportunities – but again, nothing very special.
April 16 –
11:00 a.m. (5 hours 17 minutes) 63175 (282.8 miles) MAP / GALLERY
A rather uneventful day. With the prospect of supercell
storms in the Texas
panhandle… I drove west.
Widespread, elevated morning convection was located over western Oklahoma. These storms produced cool outflow that
moved westward into the panhandle.
It became clear as I drove that this would have a big impact on the
severe potential – pushing the area of interest southward toward Lubbock. This was farther than I wanted to drive
on the day chase and I turned around near Elk City
and returned home. The gallery
contains some “less than spectacular” lightning shots around
Okarche later in the evening.
April 9 – 10:37
a.m. (12 hours 6 minutes) 62167 (456.5 miles) MAP / GALLERY
Drove to southern Kansas
and spent most of the afternoon in and just east of the Wichita area. It appeared that we would have a narrow
window of supercell and tornado opportunity in
southern Kansas. In the end, a few things were out of
sync and the storms were mostly small and uninteresting. I played around with a good handful of
storms in the Augusta and Towanda areas where updrafts showed considerable motion
at times. They did appear a little
more high-based than what I would have expected for the conditions –
giving some indication that we didn’t have it all together for
tornadoes. I grabbed a few storm
structure shots and a lightning capture and then made the drive back to Oklahoma through smoke
from wildfires and high surface winds associated with the intense low pressure
area.
March 23 – 1:49
p.m. (7 hours 30 minutes) 60650 (263.2 miles) MAP / GALLERY
A very strong storm system was moving into the plains and a
question of moisture was going to make the difference between a
tornado/no-tornado day. I guessed this one right and leaned
toward a forecast of slightly limited moisture and no tornadoes. We did have quite a few thunderstorms
– some severe – and a couple of them were fairly impressive
looking. I left Okarche and drove
to Medford where I watched a supercell
organize and move quickly toward Kansas. I soon fell behind the storm and
didn’t want to play catch-up… so I dropped south to other storms in
the Lamont and Billings
areas. While there… a strong supercell storm organized back closer to my house in
Okarche. I dropped south on I-35 to
intercept the storm around Mulhall. The updraft of the storm became exposed
as it moved toward Mulhall at about 50 mph. There were signs of strong mid-level
rotation… but not a whole lot in the lower levels. I let this storm pass and began attempts
at sunset and lightning photography farther west. One of the better storms of the day was
the one that got its act together in the Okarche area. I measured a 58 mph wind gust at the
house in association with this storm.
March 22 – 1:14
p.m. (9 hours 55 minutes) 60220 (441.1 miles) MAP / GALLERY
As far as a chase goes… this one was a bust. I thought there may be some
thunderstorms in southwest Kansas,
which would have given me a chance at some lightning photography. I came up empty. I did however; make it to Greensburg, Kansas
for the first time since an EF5 tornado just about got rid of the entire
city. I spent about an hour in city
and a little more time in the path track south of the city. I came away with several thoughts. First of all, I can hardly see how those
people have managed to stay around.
My hat is off to them. I
know they got hit by an EF5 tornado… but here we are almost two years
later and the city is still very messed up. I don’t know that I would have
been able to hang around. Even if
your house has been built back… there stands a good chance at seeing
piles of debris on either side of you.
It will take decades to get normal looking, large trees again despite
all the recent planting. Another
thing that struck me was how large areas of new homes have been built…
but stuck in the middle of them is a house that you can tell was built many decades
before the tornado. How did that
manage to miss out? Another thing
that stands out is all the many miles of new poles. Poles and more poles. I don’t know why that grabbed me,
but it did. I really hope that
everyone is able to hang in there for however many years it’s going to
take to completely rebuild. It is
going to take many more. I
didn’t take any pictures in the city. I felt like those people have had their
picture taken, their torn up trees, and their vacant house slabs caught on
camera about a million times.
It’s probably time to let that stuff go. I even closed my laptop while getting
gas in case someone thought I was a storm chaser. I don’t know what these poor folks
must think when they see storm chasers in their city. My Uncle Evan who lived his whole life
in northwest Iowa
once said, “You don’t have to worry about people here… they
are a hearty folk”.
I think that holds true for most of the plains and especially in Greensburg… but boy
do they still have a long way to go.
The rest of my time around there was spent in the path track several
miles south of the city. Again, poles, poles and more poles. I took the time to get some pictures of
my favorites – old farm houses, windmills and the sunset of course before
returning back to Okarche.
March 9 – 6:30
p.m. – 10:24 p.m. CDT (3 hrs 54 min) (MA,DS)
59248-59390 (142 miles) MAP / GALLERY
Shear was good and moisture was returning… but we
would end up paying for marginal instability. One of the best parts of this chase is
that for the second time this season, we never got more than about 25 or 30
miles from the house. It took most
of the day for storms to get their feet under them. We noticed a storm getting organized in Custer County
and planned for an intercept in Blaine
County. We were having data reception problems
for most of the trip there… and by the time the storm came into view, it
was looking pretty pathetic.
However, another storm to its south was quite severe and moving straight
for us. We shifted south to Greenfield to let this
left-moving supercell slide by us, and then fell in
behind it to collect some hail. We
found 2.19 inch hail about three miles south of Watonga. We crossed the hail swath again just
east of Watonga and then watched as the storm moved quickly to our northeast
with some sunset backlight on it.
Other storms gave us a few lightning opportunities between Calumet and
Geary… then we called it a day driving back through El Reno to Okarche.
February 10 - 2:01
p.m. - 5:31 p.m. CST (3 hrs 30 min) (RR) 57424-57555 (131 miles) MAP / GALLERY
The original target was north of Okarche… but by early
afternoon – storms started forming just southwest of the OKC area. These quickly became severe and
organized into supercells that would become tornado
producing. We left Okarche
eastbound on Waterloo Road
when the first tech problem occurred.
The inverter stopped working.
We made a quick drive to I-35 where we found a Love’s Truck Stop
and replaced the inverter. During
this drive… the lead storm (which was approaching us) started producing
tornadoes in northwest OKC and western Edmond. Our detour to find a new inverter likely
cost us a close encounter with the strongest tornado in the group as it crossed
Waterloo Road. We viewed it from a distance while
sitting on I-35 and started back southwest toward other storms. We saw the best storm structure of the
day with the third storm in the line as it moved across Yukon.
We may have seen a brief tornado from NW 10 and the Kilpatrick
Turnpike. After searching for some
large hail – finding near baseball size on the south and west sides of Yukon – we called
it a day and returned to Okarche.
It was a short – very early season – chase that helped work
out some bugs, allowed us to see some decent storms and still get home early. One of the best parts of the day was the
sunset in Okarche – complete with great mammatus,
rainbows and anvil crawler lightning.
