My first plains chase in April '03

[MonsoonDude]

We left southern california on april 15th 2003. we took the 40 freeway all the way to Oklahoma...We left in a Honda Accord..Great mileage! We stopped for gas at Kingman,AZ, Albuquerque NM,and Amarillo TX before getting to Oklahoma City.once we got to Oklahoma City we ate at Mcdonalds and talked to people about the weather there. They told us that a tornado came through the night before..About the time we were in New Mexico....It took us 20hrs to drive to Oklahoma....Once we got done with lunch at McDonalds we decided to drive to Enid,Oklahoma. Well once we got there, someone told us to head to the NSSL or National Severe Storms Lab to takl to people there. So we drove all the way to Norman,Oklahoma from Enid to talk to the NSSL....Well we had a cellphone, we had wireless capabilities on our Laptop computer...but we didnt get it to work this yet...We got to the NSSL and the door was locked...we decided to knock on it..someone buzzed us in and we told them we were chasing the April 19th storms...We got visitors passes and proceeded to the Storm Prediction Forecast Center..All the computers were awesome! everything I knew the Weather Center would look like....he showed me graphs, charts, Models and everything pointing to the red river valley...We said thanks and set up to the red river valley..we headed south on 35 and crossed the TX/OK border and stopped 5 miles in the next city...we felt something wasnt right for some odd reason and we opened up the hotel/motel booklet of Oklahoma and Texas...We decided to then head for Tulsa Oklahoma..I very nice 200 mile drive...We got to Tulsa late at night at got the room for 3 days...The room had unlimited local calls..since our laptop has a modem we set it up in the room...We ran the satellite, and Dopplar radar looks 24/7 on that computer...We kept an eye on everything for the next couple days...The evening of the 18th is where it started to get interesting..The dryline was in Western Texas by sunset and already, a storm was spotted near Childress, Texas..That storm showed up on the lightning data and everything...Since i am subscribed to Accuweather.com Premium Service, I have so much radar, satellite, maps , etc to choose from..its great! most of the rest of the evening was quiet..the childress storm died pretty fast..a few lightning strikes and that was it..over the night it was very warm, i went outside at midnight and air felt like i was swimming in the ocean..it was so humid..dewpoints at that time were at 60..we agreed that over the night someone had to stay up and keep an eye on the radar, IR satellite loops, and Forecast Models...It was my turn till about 3am...Nothing on my watch period was happening in tulsa but storms were starting to fire up over Childress again and moving to the NE straight towards Oklahoma city and Tulsa, where we were..My brother got up, and I told him it was his turn for the watch..I briefed him on the weather around the area, dewpoints, any lightning strikes etc...I fell asleep and brian was on the watch..at about 4:30am he woke me up saying that a small cluster of thunderstorms are forming to the SSW of Tulsa...I went outside and you can just feel and smell that moisture...In the distance you can see the lightning display..it was great! I stayed up with brian monitoring this storm..nothing really exciting was going on with it except some small hail and lightning. at around sunrise the storm had passed to the East of our location..more storms were slamming Oklahoma City at this point...All i can see from the Distance was the Anvil tops of those storms..One even had an overshooting top...We decided to check out at 10am...we checked out of the hotel and left..before leaving i noticed the nice Mammatus overhead from the storm to our south...We headed West on the turnpike 44..I didnt feel like stopping at the toll both so i blew it..they still havent sent me the fine, and probably will not get here because its outta state so y bother...lol...we got right between Oklahoma City and Tulsa and Stopped at a McDonalds there...I took a nap for about 4 hrs...Nothing exciting was happening, it was still cloudy a bit..the clouds had to go away so the atmosphere can destabilize...well we decided to hit Oklahoma City..We raced down towards the city, and it cleared up..we thought it was a good sign.but no clouds were forming at all...I noticed that the storms were forming where we had been napping at to our east! I quickly turned around and went about 90mph to make the 100mile track..We caught up with the storms in Tulsa...The sky was grey and raining heavily..the funny thing was not much lightning was present...I kept on going on the freeway and then the sky got completely dark! so dark in fact i thought it was nearing night, but it wasnt!..i got off the freeway and under a gas station for shelter..small hail up to about nickel size was falling..i hope my windshield is ok i said...checked out fine...We pointed the Video Camera to the very black rainshaft moving in the distance..turns out it was a nice size tornado moving to the NE..we were 2 miles North of Hectorville i believe at this time...The storms along the dryline moved on quick and left towards the NE..we didnt wanna chase them into Joplin so we just called it quits, got our twister, and headed home...that was my first plains chase!

Kev

[weatherlover427]

Quite a story Kevin! Very detailed and informative!

[ColdFront77]

Nice story, Kevin. Thank you for sharing it.

[Guest]

Thanks for sharing that great story Kevin:)