What a day! And in March none-the-less! Early morning checks of data weren’t looking too promising, and although hopes were high to see something, this was about the furthest thing to expect. What started out as a high end SLIGHT RISK was later upgraded to a MODERATE RISK when storms began to fire and go severe early in the afternoon. March Madness was be about the only appropriate title for this log as it literally could be called madness! Early day mis-directions, unusual things in the roads, and what I would venture to say to be about 25% of the OU Campus chasing along with us! This doesn’t include the pre-chase preparations the day before starting at the Storm Conference in Des Moines, IA, which had a small handful of us spending that Friday looking over everything before making a final decision. So many firsts on this chase, including the new single day record for personally witnessed tornadoes, which I am still in debate as the final one of the day wasn’t visibly on the ground from our vantage point, but was reported as a tornado. Several funnels throughout the course of this chase, a core punch in Weatherford, and a first time chase caravan made this an unbeatable start to the 2004 season!!!
The 2004 Severe Storms and Doppler Radar Conference was an excellent conference for the day and a half of talks I attended, but Nature’s call in Southwest Oklahoma pulled a handful of us out on Friday night to make an appearance at Nature’s opening show.
The Chase Eve scramble began early in the day with Tim Samaras, Carl Young, Doug Keisling, and myself looking over the maps for the coming day. Things were looking pretty good in terms of everything coming together of a reasonably decent chase day for late March.
Decisions weren’t hard to make as most of us had elected to make the trip starting after the banquet that night. Blake Naftel and Keith Brown coordinate with Tim and I planned on heading out with them.
It got to be pretty late before heading out of Des Moines. Blake, Keith and I made our sleep target in Wichita, KS, hoping to arrive not too long after 2am. Unfortunately, it was almost a quarter after 4am when we finally arrived at our Super 8 Motel in Park City, just north of Wichita. We glanced over some of the models after fighting with the room’s phone line to get AOL dial-up before finally crashing out around 5am to Kelley Cass mentioning “a possible tornado outbreak for some tomorrow”.
We awoke to Blake’s ringing phone close to 8, and off-an-on sleep between then and 9a lead into the morning data checks. Not good. SPC’s slight risk was a high end slight risk which I was pushing to be moderate. Conditions weren’t looking too bad except for the massive layer of clouds which had spread across the entire state of Oklahoma. Keith, Blake and I were praying for a hole of clearness in Southwestern Oklahoma to spread a bit giving way to some much needed sun and heating. Our target was Clinton, Oklahoma, and what turned out to be a wonderful ‘X’ from Keith.
The start of the chase wasn’t a joyful venture. After a pre-chase warm up of Blake’s gas receipt across the parking lot of the gas station into a nearby grass area (nearly being taken out by a passing semi, yes kids, look both ways before chasing a receipt in high winds across the frontage road), we headed on our way… sort of… “Why am I seeing a sign for Salina”, I asked over the HAM when noting the 65 miles to Salina sign. It wasn’t long before we realized that Salina is indeed north, and that’s not the way we wanted to go. It cost us about 30 minutes and gave me a world of grief as I sat with unpleasant thoughts of missing the day’s only tornado by 15 minutes. Some hay bails in the road left behind by a farmer on the Kansas Turnpike gave me a bit of a scare, but we finally were on our way.
Tornado watches went up for our target area, which we were still enroute to. We were hauling west on I-40 to intercept the first of what would be two southern storms that was slowly developing near Elk City. Word hadn’t reached us about the northern storm til a bit later in the afternoon. I was cursing myself for the earlier oopsie in Wichita which was looking more and more like it was going to kill us, but the Elk City storm seemed to know we were coming, cause as it slowly made its way to the northeast, it maintained its strength, but remained a severe storm with no tornado warnings attached.
That was until about 3:45 when OUN issued a Tornado Warning effective for Custer County. We jumped north on Hwy 183 to see a quickly developed rope tornado several miles to our Northwest. I relayed the report to 911 via my faintly signaled cell phone before making a quick attempt to shoot video over my arm out the side window. I managed a quick glimpse of the storm, but nothing video worth.
We made a video stop a couple miles north of Arapaho before continuing on our way. We jumped northeast along OK33 towards the town of Thomas, watching the storm running along side us to our immediate north. I got excited to see a small, brief tornado kick up north of Custer City behind a precip shaft. I again took lousy driving video out the window of my car. It quickly dissipated into nothing. I never saw it touch down (visibility and driving limitations), but rumors later on told stories of a touchdown. Tornado #2 for the day.
Reports of another developing storm following on the heels of this storm had Blake, Keith and I talking about dropping south to intercept. I starting getting a stronger TV reception from Oklahoma City, so I pulled off to make a better observation of the radar screen. In that few minutes, I got separated from Blake and Keith, hearing the last of them saying they were turning around on OK3. I followed OK3 back to OK33 and made a dash south on OK54 towards Weatherford. The storm was being tornado warned and was expected to cross I-40 right at Weatherford. Getting in position was going to include a core punch from the north, and I found myself being pelted with quarter-sized hail. I pulled off at a local radio station and shot some quick vid before moving south into town to record a funnel cloud passing over I-40 in Weatherford. As I was shooting this, I glimpsed behind me to see the rainshaft progressing at me from behind me on the street. I took my camera from the funnel to tape this as I had never seen a rain shaft move at me so defined. I jumped back in my car and began to shoot the funnel as sirens blazed around me. The funnel lifted, and I returned to I-40 and began to pluck my way back to the east.
I caught up with Blake and Keith again on I-40 just east of Weatherford. They regrouped with Tim Samaras and Carl Young nearby. I rejoined our little caravan back to Hwy 281/270 and we headed north on there. We ended up meeting up with Amos Magliocco and several others in a rather massive chaser’s convergence.
We swapped quick stories and photos before making our way along a series of Bob’s Roads in the vicinity of Okarche west of OK3. With darkness falling, we wanted to stop and shoot some video and stills of the most amazing structure I had ever seen in a storm.
While gawking over the incredible view, we were treated to a day ending surprise. Over the silent mummer of awes, I hear Keith start chanting “Funnel! Funnel! Look at it go!”
I flash the camera to the west (looking north) to catch Sibling Funnels spin out of the clouds and gracefully drift eastward before spinning out. Chants, cheers, and a couple bad dance moves celebrated the end to an awesome day! Although we never saw a debris cloud (due to limited visibility because of rain and terrain), this was reported as a tornado, which brought the day’s total to 3. I won’t bet the farm on a touchdown with this, but as long as it stands reported, I’ll take it!
With darkness falling and hunger (and need to relieve myself off all the Nestea I drank), we headed into Northern Oklahoma City on OK3 and stopped in at Chili’s for dinner. I splurged from my tight budget and downed a needed steak sandwich. Tim and Carl joined us later in the evening where we enjoyed the stories of the day. We drained the remaining battery power from our cameras going over some of the video highlights of the chase while laughing at ourselves and the massive amount of follies which kept us entertained over the course of the day (wet piles of carpet and missing equipment to name a couple).
We all departed from the Chili’s close to 11 where we exchanged goodbyes. I made may way towards McPhearson, Kansas where I crashed overnight at a rest stop in my car for the second time in 4 days. I was glanced by the weakening squall line on my way out, but nothing that exciting.
Kudos and thanks to a great many people! Blake and Keith for allowing me my first opportunity to chase in caravan with someone (and thanks for allowing me use of their images on here)! I had a terrific time and hope to enjoy the experience with you guys again! To Tim and Carl for the pre-chase collaboration and the good laughs at dinner later that night. Jerry Clemmons and James Carnegie for their excellent nowcasting in the early afternoon hours! Amos, great to see you in the field! Thanks for taking the photo of me holding the littered beer can! That oughta be good! It was an excellent day full of firsts, great stories, and awesome sights. An excellent start to the 2004 Chase Season!
