My third storm chase took me way beyond where I was initially planning; at first I was thinking Red River, then in the morning perhaps as far north as Oklahoma City, and by the time the afternoon rolled around I had already decided to go after the first tornadic storm, way up near Enid. Still, as it turns out I had missed out on the best and most photogenic tornado of the day in that cell by about 15 minutes.
My option after coming in behind that cell was to continue to chase it east on 51 in the hopes of seeing it produce another tornado, or wait for the second cell, which was rapidly coming in behind it, a bit further to the south, as it looked pretty strong and had some low-level rotation (and the local chopper pilot was seeing debris clouds in the rain sheets). So yeah, I stuck on that one, went east then south to get ahead of it and found a good spot to wait.
Last time I mentioned that I hadn’t seen any other chasers the entire tornado outbreak, since I was down south of Norman for the most part (I did see some stuff from one that was way down near Marietta later on). Unfortunately (or fortunately) that didn’t happen today; I ran into a bunch of them as I watched the cell approach, then they moved south as did I to get ahead of it a bit more… and then there was a huge traffic jam. Chasers everywhere; pros, amateurs, and maybe half of VORTEX2, including a DOW truck. To give you a clear picture, it’s a two-lane road near an intersection, and most of these guys are just lined up southbound with their parking breaks on. I moved off the road onto a little driveway, but no one is really moving anyway. And the storm rushes, with huge rotation right above our friggin’ heads. Everything to the west and north is a sea-green color. I’m a little anxious.
It takes hail and rain to get everyone to move; most join a convoy train heading east and I get in it, pull over for a minute, then get back in it again. It’s long as hell, and everyone is driving ass slow. We get through one little town with no side roads and the tornado sirens are going off. We keep going at our pathetic pace and get to another town (Guthrie I think) where there’s all sorts of intersections, and everyone scatters. But I notice a few cars ahead there’s the DOW truck, and I think, “Hell these guys know where to escape, I’ll just follow them.” And sure enough we get back to I-35 in no time.
Meanwhile that first storm I decided to stop chasing spawned another great photogenic tornado (if not more than one), right in Stillwater and the OSU campus. Great. And other storms have exploded over the metro area–some are tornadic, others just have baseball-size hail. The storm that tore through the convoy, it was tornadic at times–it might set down a little bit, then recycle quickly and wait a few miles before doing it again. I hear it did do damage to Dover I believe, which was the town I had passed through some 20-30 minutes earlier chasing the first cell. But except for that first cell, far as I can tell all of the other tornadoes were mostly rain-wrapped in high-precip storms and were very hard to see.
Anyway, I continued down I-35 south and the storms that had brewed up and moved east were just amazing to see in the evening light. Kind of a funky day.
— Alan
Edit: Pics at http://picasaweb.google.com/alan.dunkin/StormChaseMay2010# - Wednesday’s chase photos start after the first set of lightning photos.
