Tornado at Ada, Oklahoma, May 21, 2011.
Chasing in southeast Oklahoma is a special kind of challenge. I was reminded of this fact as I spent a few minutes twisting through the hollers, my view completely obstructed by trees, as a tornado-warned storm that had already produced funnels was moving somewhere over my left shoulder. Nonetheless, that was my target today, due to a potentially favorable spin in the atmosphere and huge instability, among other things. Ardmore, specifically, I viewed as a starter point, but when I got there after driving from Wichita, I couldn’t help driving just a bit farther to Marietta, just north of the Texas border. (Also, I left the Ardmore truck stop because a skunk was wandering around, and I’d almost stepped on it when I attempted to get out of my car.) I was anxious over an already-reported tornado on the ground in Texas, but like everything in Texas, it was really far away. I chose to remain in my target area, watching cloud towers push up and break apart – until one started to look as if it meant it. It had crisp, billowing convection and began to cut a gorgeous shape in the sky. When I got up close enough to see the base, rotation was evident. At first, it had a multi-vortex appearance and produced a couple of needle funnels in this mode. Later, it put down short-lived tornadoes. And much later, as this storm died, another to its north produced a tornado just outside Ada, Oklahoma. I got to it just in time, and this photo shows the structure of the storm with the tornado on the ground under it. I’ll be posting more photos later, but once again, I am extremely sleep-deprived and anticipate more driving and chasing tomorrow and Monday. I hope I can find a few minutes (really, a few hours) to post photos soon.
May 6: Colby, Kansas
Our priority became getting out of the path. We also had to navigate out of the hail, so we headed east out of Harper. Check out this NWS photo of 5.24-inch hail from this storm!
On our way to the border, we stopped in Shattuck, Okla., where a mesmerizing park sprouts a number of old-time windmills, in a variety of designs. Every time the wind blows, there’s a haunting creaking and whispering from these beautiful mechanical trees, giant metal flowers that tower above the colorful wildflowers at their feet.
e were feeling cold outflow winds the whole time, and then, briefly, we got warm inflow, the sign that at least one part of the storm was still trying to stay alive by pulling in warm air from the east. About that time, a huge gustnado – could it have been a tornado? – spun up red dust in the field right next to us. The dust churned and rose, almost in a tube shape, to the edge of the storm clouds.
I last wrote on May 15. On May 16, we chased with George in Kansas, but didn’t see much … just some mushy storms and a few lightning bolts. And my car’s odometer turned over 100,000 miles somewhere near Liberal, Kansas.
After a brief lightning show at our hotel in Denison, Texas, we got a little sleep and got psyched for Sunday, May 20. The Storm Prediction Center’s discussions of the day’s potential included all kinds of signs of doom, and the other data seemed to bear out the potential for tornadoes. We hovered on the Texas-Oklahoma border at a truck stop, checking data on the laptop, then headed into Oklahoma to Atoka in the early afternoon to get nearer to where the action was, in the PDS tornado watch box – or “particularly dangerous situation.” A quick Internet radar check revealed a couple of storms had already gone up north of us, on the boundary. We started heading that way.
Ahead of us on Route 75 were two Doppler on Wheels trucks. We took this as a good sign, but the circumstances were not good. Chasing in eastern Oklahoma is challenging, to say the least. There are massive hills and lots of trees. It’s very difficult to see storm structure. And rain makes it even worse, and boy, did we get rain – but not yet.
Certainly, we were in a tornadic circulation, if not just south of a tornado, and my adrenaline was high. It’s the first time I ever felt truly in danger from a storm. In town, the sirens were screaming. Some guy was poking along ahead of me as if he was out shopping for flowers. I flashed my lights and he moved over. At a red light, I stopped, made sure no cars were coming, then went through with my blinkers on. Dave was aghast. I said, “It’s a #&%*$ tornado, Dave, I’m running the red light!” As we pushed through town, rain curtains ahead of us were clearly rushing from right to left, wrapping around the area of rotation. We were in the “bear’s cage,” no doubt about it.
May 27 was a blast, or, you might say, a sandblast. Dave, Bill and I met up with Steve Sponsler and headed up into Kansas. We had hopes for supercells, but most storms were going up early and beginning to merge in a messy line. At a truck stop in Sublette, we looked at radar images and weighed our options as the sky outside became more and more ominous. By the time we headed north, it was too late to get individual cells … the whole mess had merged into a great line, a dramatic shelf cloud rolling toward us, kicking up brown dirt underneath it as it went. We stopped by a radar dome and got video and stills as it approached. Then the first dust hit. It was a haboob, a Dust Bowl storm, a roaring animal.
Upslope storms – the kind that form on the higher elevations near the mountains – seemed the best bet for May 28. The phones were out in the hotel, which was a very plush Super 8, I might add, so we got the basics on the day’s outlook from Jay Antle and began meandering west. We met up with Ed Roberts from Kansas City and some other chasers in Guymon, Oklahoma, who kindly shared some data files they’d pulled, and we headed farther west. In Dalhart, Texas, a nice woman at the Holiday Inn Express let us plug in for a few minutes to get more information, and we headed for Clayton, New Mexico. If you’re counting, that’s three states already.
