3:37pm: Moments ago, we caught sight of a funnel descending from the cloud base, along with a faint debris cloud at the horizon, over a cluster of trees. A chaser I spoke with later noted the absence of a discernable wall cloud with this funnel, which was unusual.
We pause on the side of the road and hurry out of the van to catch a closer look. Before long, the twister recedes, and we're waiting for something new to happen. We notice the circulation beginning to move eastward, so we return to the van and turn around to stay ahead of the storm.
After a 60-second jog east, we get out of the van once more, looking closely for a new funnel to drop.
Before I go on, I should explain that the storm we were chasing was moving very quickly. In these situations, as one circulation fades, a new one can appear out of nowhere farther to the east, as if the circulation itself is trying to keep up with the storm. As a rookie chaser, I was less than aware of this, but the astute eye of our guide, Dave Holder, caught a new broad circulation forming immediately above us. After a moment's hesitation to see what was going to happen, a funnel began appearing at the edge of the circulation, pretty much RIGHT ON TOP OF US.
That's when he yells at the top of his lungs:
"GET IN THE VAN! WE GOTTA GO NOW!!"
In the adrenaline rush that followed, I try to get one last shot of the forming funnel above, only to have my Nikon's auto-focus fail on me. We have no choice, we have to get out NOW. No time to fiddle with my camera.
As Dave reaches to open the van, he realizes that, in the mad dash out of the van moments earlier, the van was accidentally locked. Panic. WE'RE LOCKED OUT, and a tornado yards away is approaching. But, in a stroke of incredible luck, Dave pulls out a spare key from his pocket he just happened to take with him that morning.
In a matter of seconds, we piled into the van and ejected eastward on highway 11. Not one, but TWO, funnels drop onto the road, directly where we had been standing seconds before. We're now flying east, with the twisters tracking a few hundred feet behind us. Apparently my camera was panicking, too, because this is the best shot I could get amid the action:
Perhaps it's better that this is blurry, so it's left to the imagination. But there DEFINITELY are a PAIR of twisters two-stepping on the ground for at least a couple of minutes.
The tornadoes recede, but the broad circulation remains. Probably the most striking phenomenon is the violent movement on the underside of the wall cloud. The giant spinning mass is impressive enough, but the vertical motion associated with the updrafts and downdrafts are absolutely awe- and fear-inspiring. The circulation eventually drifts north of the east-west highway, and it's now safe to get a look at the big enchilada:
The sound is unearthly. Everyone always says a tornado sounds like freight train, but the chasers I was with insisted a waterfall was a more fitting aural comparison. I have to say that I agree, although it was accompanied by an intense, low-toned whistle the entire way. It's WINDY, too: inflow being sucked into the storm hits our backs at over 50 mph.
We continue darting eastward, with rain shafts wrapping around the back edge of the circulation and fingers randomly descending from the sky. Some of them lightly touch the ground...
...while one forms a wedge that briefly punches the ground...
(SIDEBAR: We later learned that the tour with "Cyclone Jim" Leonard (who had accompanied us on Thursday) was not so lucky. The tornado ripped through his vehicle, blowing out every window except the windshield. Some minor injuries, but nothing more, thankfully. Apparently, Jim said that was the scariest experience he had had in his 37 years of storm chasing. Strong words, considering the source.)
4:12pm: After several minutes of driving right alongside the storm, we pull into Medford, Oklahoma, where the sirens are blaring and no one can be found. We catch a glimpse of the radar, which clearly indicates where the tornado is. Notice the hook on the southwest corner of the storm:
The storm is racing to the northeast, and it's becoming apparent that we're not going to catch it. It's time to abandon it, and we catch highway 60 east towards Ponca City to pursue another cell moving in from the south.
4:42pm We reach Ponca City, and we're ready to turn south. One problem: our new storm has moved very quickly (seeing a pattern here?), and we'd have to punch the core in order to have shot at it. This means driving through the cell's most intense rain and hail (softball size), only to come out the other side and possibly have a strong tornado obscured by precipitation. Very risky and even dangerous. However, moving further east into an Indian reservation is not an attractive option either, since there are hardly ANY roads for many, many miles. No roads = no options.
We play it conservatively and go east.
5:01pm: We hear on the radio that a rotating wall cloud is entering southwest Oklahoma City. Not good.
5:25pm: We've made it through the Indian reservation and have turned southward on highway 18. We just heard sirens in Fairfax, Oklahoma, and we're in perfect position to see the tornado. (If it exists.)
We saw much of the same violent cloud motion under the cell's wall cloud as we had in the earlier Medford storm. Fortunately for Fairfax, the circulation never dropped. But it did provide a backdrop for some eerie pictures:
5:31pm: New cells have exploded over the Oklahoma City area and are darting east VERY quickly. We're a little out of position, so we abandon the Fairfax storm and dive southward to try to catch them.
En route, we hear on the radio exactly what we don't want to hear: large tornado forming over Norman, Oklahoma, home to our motel the previous three nights, Oklahoma University, and Dave's house. Dave is understandably stressed...and it's about to get worse.
5:34pm: A tornado is on the ground, moving through Norman near highway 9 and Lindsey St...right by Dave's house and the National Weather Center. Debris is in the air.
5:37pm: We hear reports of cars getting flipped on an Oklahoma City freeway.
6:06pm: We're still driving south, desperately trying to catch hold of Dave's roommate, who was in his house when the Norman storm moved through. The same storm is producing a major circulation over Shawnee. The same storm which damaged a Love's gas station on I-40, which you might have seen all over the news.
6:17pm: We breath a huge sigh of relief, as Dave learns his house is OK and largely undamaged. Houses a half-mile to the south are not so lucky.
6:40pm: Still diving southward trying to keep up with the dryline, but the storms are moving so quickly that we just can't keep up. BUT we do see a purty rainbow on the back edge of a cell:
8:10pm: We've pretty much given up for the day, since everything is flying eastward at an unbelievable 70 mph.
But out of nowhere, a new circulation forms directly above us. We turn eastward to keep pace with it, as well as a second cell moving in a parallel direction. Circulation to the left, circulation to the right.
Dessert.
Neither would eventually drop a tornado, but the north circulation was VERY photogenic:
Just before sunset:
If only we could've pulled over in time for this next shot, I would've been a VERY happy novice photographer. Perhaps you can imagine how beautiful it was to see the sun setting just below a gorgeous inflow tail cloud:
8:35pm: After abandoning the beautiful cell in far east Oklahoma (By now, we've driven all the way from near Dodge City, Kansas, to the Oklahoma-Arkansas border), we now begin working our way home. Eagerly twisting our heads upwards -- to the extent possible within the van -- we see mammatus clouds on the underside of the last cell we had been chasing. Just then, we cross Reed and Co. (Discovery Channel crew and all), parked on the side of the road in Checotah, Oklahoma.
This is probably the most exciting thing that's happened in this sleepy village in a long while. A large group of children and teenagers, all with jaws on the pavement, have congregated around the Dominator. But cops, with nothing better to do apparently, disperse the crowd in order to keep from causing a disturbance. One woman somewhat comically pleas, "We ain't done lookin' at y'all, why dontcha head on over to the Wal-Mart parkin' lot down the street?"
The sun has long since set, and we scoot into a Pizza Hut just before closing time to grab cheap fast food and Bud Light. Aside from the tragedy that befell the Oklahoma City area (5 people died), it's been a memorable day overflowing with adrenaline. While that experience was tough to beat, we did have a couple of last hurrahs on Tuesday's chase. More on that later...
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