Summary
I broke two streaks with this chase:
1) 717 days between legit tornado sightings (last: 19 May 2013)
2) First legit tornado on a solo chase
This was also a rather stressful chase since Norman would end up being hit by a tornado...again. This time, however, I didn't
miss it.
Chase partners: none
I'm going to count six total tornadoes, although almost all of them were pretty weak and short lived.
Also, I have a love-hate relationship with Caddo County, Oklahoma. The terrain and roads are absolute shit in portions, yet I've now seen multiple tornadoes there in relatively good areas of the county.
I was busy debating whether or not to target near Hutchinson, KS or southwest OK around lunchtime when I saw a small storm go up right off the Wichita mountains...and it was rotating. Knowing that clearing was developing from west to east and convective temps were pretty low, I knew I needed to get west. I left Norman around 1 PM in pursuit of that first storm, but it was dying as I worked my way west on OK-9.
I noticed the backing winds and convergence developing ahead of the dryline in SW OK, so I continued west through Chickasha towards Anadarko. While chilling in Anadarko I saw the mean looking cumulus structure on the storms that were going up southwest of town. So I went south on OK-8 towards Cyril. Once I got west of town I saw the wall cloud forming to my WSW; it just had that look to it. I said to myself as I sped west on OK-19, "I'm a few minutes away from breaking my streak." Indeed I was. Only a minute or two after I stopped on a hill three miles east of Apache, the first tornado touched down a half mile west of me. It wasn't particularly photogenic and it took several minutes before it finally condensed, but it was my first tornado in almost two years, and it was fairly close - close enough to hear the whooshing sound it made as it spun through empty fields northwest of me. Unfortunately I had forgotten to check my camera settings until nearly the end of this tornado. I had left them from a previous chase when I was shooting in the dark, so nearly all of my photos of this tornado are overexposed and unrecoverable :(.
The rope out was kinda neat, but I missed much of it going east. I repositioned back on OK-8 northwest of Cyril in time to see the second tornado as a nub funnel to my NW.
I jumped on County Road 1410 eastward to stay with the storm, which continued to display a low-hanging rotating wall cloud. A few miles east of the turn, I witnessed a third tornado, this one multiple-vortex:
It was such a wonderful feeling to be sitting just behind a tornado in a strong RFD wrapping rain and small hail around at probably 40-50 mph, shaking my car a little. I was practically alone, too, a rare occurrence in Oklahoma in May.
I began to get worried at this point based on the track the storm was taking and how good it was starting to look. I began a series of phone calls with my wife, who works in OKC, about the potential for a strike on the OKC-OUN corridor. It was at this point that I decidedly shifted my chase strategy to get east and ahead of the storm in the event that I needed to sprint back to my apartment in Norman to get my pets to shelter (they were home alone with no way to protect themselves). If that hadn't been an issue I would've stuck more towards being directly behind the tornado - to the south and west of it.
I tracked east and north while watching the evolution of the meso at close range. I eventually wound up getting back into Chickasha from the west. I continued east, then northeast of Chickasha on US 62, then OK-92. The storm really seemed to struggle to put the final piece in and produce a tornado despite a consistent low-level mesocyclone. I eventually wound up near the intersection of E1300 Rd. and N2920 Rd. just southeast of I-44 as the big tornado formed. The rotation and vertical motion within the wall cloud were among the strongest I'd ever seen from close range. Again, however, the tornado took its sweet time getting organized.
It spat out a satellite funnel. Could never confirm ground contact.
Looking northwest.Almost immediately after it began to condense near the ground, what was probably an occlusion downdraft or DRC (the beginning of a really wet hook) started to obscure it in rain. This was about the last view I had of it before I lost it:
There was no way I was going to try to keep going north with the condition the gravel/mud road was in and the car I drive, so I turned east to try to work my way back towards Blanchard. I got swept up in the hook and RFD as it came flying around the south side of the tornado. I knew there was a tornado probably 1 mile north of me but I could not see it at all and driving was rather hazardous at that point.
Knowing that the tornado had become nearly stationary over the interstate, I decided to try to punch back into the hook by going north on OK-76 from Blanchard. Unfortunately the police had blocked off the highway north of town. I may have briefly caught a glimpse at the left side of it at this point, but other than that I never saw it at its biggest.
I was forced to go back to town and take US 62 up to highway 9 again (amazing the circles I end up driving on chases). I tried messing around with the hook again southeast of Newcastle, but was forced to flee east when the visibility plummeted. It's a good thing I didn't stick around, since the storm cycled and ended up producing another tornado not far from where I had been. This was the tornado that formed just west of Norman. I happened to catch the top of it above the trees from near the Riverwind Casino.
I should note that I was very near chaser Hank Schyma, aka Pecos Hank, at a few points in my chase. This part of his video shows what that tornado looked like. Apparently it was never documented by NWS OUN, and I could never personally confirm ground contact from my vantage point. Nice to see someone can confirm it. Also, I'll go ahead and plug Hank's Youtube channel. He is a quality videographer and has many entertaining chase videos from recent years.
This was the most agonizing moment of the chase, as I was forced to accept that this storm was going to keep pushing more east than north and was likely to produce a tornado in Norman. At first I felt powerless to do anything and was going to ride it out at my current location. But when I remembered just how slow it was moving, I decided to make a run for it. I jumped back on I-35 and flew up to my exit for home. The interstate was eerily empty, although there were a large number of cars stopped on the entrance/exit ramps.
I managed to get to my apartment probably just as the Norman tornado was forming about 2 miles west of me on Robinson St. (there was damage between 48th and 36th Ave. when I drove by later). I shoved my pets into our first floor kitchen bathroom in the center of the building. Feeling instantly relieved, I jumped back oustide and ran across the street to the grounds of Max Westheimer Airport to witness the tornado ooze across northwest Norman. It never fully condensed, but I saw power flashes and could hear the whooshing sound for several minutes, even after it became fully wrapped in rain.
I never thought I would see a tornado in Norman during the time I lived there. After I missed the one on 13 April 2012, I figured I would always be somewhere else when one hit. To have seen tornadoes from Apache through Norman on this storm this day makes me very proud.
I tried briefly to continue to pursue this storm after it was safely past my apartment and no longer a threat. Rush hour traffic plus gawkers made this very difficult, however. I gave that up and instead decided to try to pursue the new storms that had developed southwest of OKC. It took me a long time to get out of the area. As anyone who lives in the OKC-OUN corridor knows, the river plus random roads being covered in water after heavy rain makes escaping that area to the west very challenging. I had to go all the way back down to highway 9 to get west again. The entire chase after this point was one long frustrating drive in a circle south and west of Newcastle. I absolutely could not find a decent view of the storms due to hills and trees. Also the locals were flooding every single road and took all the fun out of spotting. Plus the storm became low contrast and very low to the ground, so I couldn't see anything after awhile anyway. I drove home after taking this last photo:
I hate chasing within 40 miles of OKC. Every time it's an agonizingly frustrating clusterfuck. Unfortunately, living there, it's almost unavoidable.
I should add that it's a good thing I advised my wife to stay at work until late in the evening. Not only did the first tornadic storm cause street flooding in Moore where she would've had to have driven, one of the later storms produced an EF2 tornado right next to I-35 in south OKC. As it was, she still was delayed getting home because portions of I-35 had standing water even after 9 PM. OKC got a lot of rain that day. It was partway through the wettest May ever.
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