March 26, 2017 chase account

Chase partners: John Lawson

Summary: Naturally, the longer you chase at a given level of risk, the more likely you are to befall some misfortune proportional to that risk level. As I have become a bit more aggressive about hook slicing and core punching, it was all but certain I would eventually pay for it. Not that I haven't already had close calls (e.g., May 22, 2016), but I haven't been significantly impacted directly by severe weather...until today's chase. And it was costly. My car looked pretty good for a 2013 Mazda before today. But after today it looked like a golfball - full of huge dents. I also lost a lot of glass to hail larger than baseballs. But we did see a tornado, although that was weird, too.

We didn't leave the OKC area until 4 PM after seeing the first storm develop. We stuck with it from near Pauls Valley to east of Byars. It exhibited strong cloud base rotation that was pulling up scud, but it would've been a stretch to have called it a low-level meso. It dropped generally sub-severe hail on us northeast of Pauls Valley. By the time we got to US 177 east of Byars the storm's base had become featureless. There was a very obvious and large horseshoe base, but absolutely no lowerings or features of any kind. The storm also appeared to be fighting a bit with outflow coming from the storm to the south, so we eventually bailed for that one.

This scuddy tag was noticeably rotating as it lifted vigorously into the cloud base, but given how shrimpy it was, it was clear
1) that this particular feature was not going to become tornadic, and
2) the storm was probably only marginally missing one ingredient necessary to produce a tornado - some degree of near-surface buoyancy/moisture.


Quarter to golf-ball-sized hail that fell as we cruised under the high based storm east of Paoli.
This was probably the most fun hail core I had ever driven through. But it was also a sign I was not respecting the storm.
This lack of respect would catch up to us.


By the time we got to OK-59 and U.S. 177, the base had gone flat. This is what an otherwise well-organized, but never-tornadic, supercell looks like.


Our last glimpses of the first storm. The downdraft had taken out a huge chunk of the cloud mass back there. And that "lowering" looks more like a young shelf cloud than anything else.

We got to Ada well before the brunt of the storm got there. We sat in Ada for a long time wondering if the storm was going to just die. It really seemed to struggle to maintain itself. Thinking we would give the storm one last glance before giving up, we ventured east of town on OK-1. Large hail abruptly began falling as we moved through the east side of town. Most of the hail was probably mostly ping-pong sized, but some of the stones were large enough to worry me. We also saw the storm had suddenly pulsed up and appeared to show rotation southwest of us, but due to trees and hills, we had a poor view. So we ventured east a bit, pulling off on Lovelady Road. About a mile south of OK-1 we were busy watching another example of cloud base rotation with scud being pulled up into it when we noticed a horizontal tube below the cloud base to the southwest. After a few moments of uncertainty, we noted dust at the ground and realized we were looking at a (likely non-supercellular) tornado.

Note the lack of any real semblance of a low-level mesocyclone. The shape of this tornado
and that it seemed to materialize out of nowhere were strong points of evidence that this was not a mesocyclonic tornado.




Just a tiny bit of visible dust at the ground. Tornado!


All of the above occured while we had been mainly focused on this feature much closer. It was slowly rotating and vertical motion was visible, although not particularly strong.

We let the non-tornadic rotation cross the road to our south, then turned around to get back to OK-1. On the way there, more hail. It quickly got larger. By the time we were going east on 1, the hail became large enough to cause damage, cracking my windshield. Then another crack. Suddenly we were frantically searching for shelter. We found a private residence off the highway with an awning and space under it and pulled under it. The owner was there and allowed us to sit under it as baseballs began pelting the ground and the awning. It was incredibly loud. He said we had to leave when his wife showed up, and within 60 seconds she came in. We had no choice - we had to back out and expose ourselves to the barrage. It wasn't 10 seconds before the first stone fully penetrated the rear windshield. Then another one. Within probably 30 seconds most of the rear windshield was gone. We moved back west to get out of the hail, taking more damage to both front and rear windshields in the process.

I did not do a good job of documenting this experience, as I was too worried about getting out of the hail to remember to film it, and too worried about the damage to think to stop and pick up stones after it ended. Thankfully John thought to record something. This was during the 60-second respite from the barrage.

So @wxJeffDuda and I saw max 3 inches here. Took out branches and our back windscreen. 5 miles E of Ada on Highway 1. @NWSNorman #okwx #hail pic.twitter.com/pmbsh1tlhu

— John Lawson (@johnroblawson) March 27, 2017

Brutal.


Given the size of some of the stones and the length of the storm, I'm a bit surprised the front windshield didn't take more damage.

Sadly, the storms weren't done once we fled this one. We went back to Ada looking for tarp to cover the back window. While we hastily (and poorly) covered it, another strong storm loomed, heading straight for Ada. We managed to thread the needle to avoid additional hail, but even that was tense at times. Our poor tarping job was exposed by the time we got back to Pauls Valley, and the noise from the tarp flapping at highway speeds was so deafening and almost insane we just removed it and drove the rest of the way without it. It was much quieter, and no big deal.

Surprisingly, the vast majority of the damage sustained to the front windshield was on the driver's side. Only two impacts/cracks occured right of the mid-line of the windshield. Also impressive to me were 4 large dents in the window trim on the driver's side. I suspect that some larger hail stones may have actually hit the side window, but due to the obliqueness of the angle of impact, the hail stone was re-directed downward into the window trim without damaging the glass itself. I never claimed any of this damage on my insurance. I saw no reason why. This was all my negligence and lack of respect for Mother Nature. So why should the insurance company pay? Besides, all they would have to do is some basic Googling of me to find this site and see that I have a history of chasing and exposing vehicles to hail.

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