As you may have surmised from the wedge tornado snapshot from my previous post, our chase yesterday was a little thrilling. My account of the day follows...in convenient timeline format!
8:00am: My iPhone alarm goes off. This is normally a decidedly negative experience, usually involving me angrily fumbling for the snooze button for a half-hour. But not today. Today, we chase. The feeling is as close to a child's Christmas morning as I can get at my age.
9:30am: By now I've showered, shaved, enjoyed good old-fashioned motel breakfast consisting primarily of stale Honey Nut Cheerios and orange juice from concentrate. But I check out the Storm Prediction Center's website and notice that our day has been upgraded to "high-risk", with a "concerning" outbreak of strong, long-tracking tornadoes "expected". Strong language, and the local news stations are playing this up to be quite an event. Now we wait...
10:12am: The dryline boundary, where supercells typically form, is still in the Texas panhandle, but it's moving rapidly eastward towards our home base in Norman, Oklahoma. The "moisture gradient" is impressive: the distance between very humid and very dry air is extremely short, perhaps only a few miles. Dewpoints are in the upper 60's east of the line, mid 20's to the west. This line will actually end up being the trigger for the outbreak later today.
All is quiet where we are. The sun hasn't crept out from behind the clouds, and we are waiting patiently in a Wal-Mart parking lot, watching the pilot episode of Two and a Half Men on Klipsi's laptop.
11:08am: Time to go. We're heading to TornadoVideos.net headquarters, where Reed Timmer's tornado intercept vehicle is housed.
"The Dominator", which weighs over four TONS and is stuffed full of audio/video equipment and meteorological instruments, is waiting for the impending journey:
Soon, we're not alone in the Headquarters parking lot. Production crew members from the Discovery Channel begin to arrive (recall that Reed is one of the headliners on Discovery's documentary, Storm Chasers).
12:02pm: Finally, he arriveth. Reed Timmer shows up, ready to go:
Note that he's wearing a blue t-shirt. Apparently, the Discovery Channel requires him to wear a blue t-shirt every day they shoot. It's in his contract. He has 15 of them, apparently. It's amazing how much control the Discovery Channel exerts over the team, but hey, they sign the checks.
The driver of The Dominator, Joel Taylor, getting miced up for the show. He's wearing an OU shirt...another Discovery Channel stipulation:
12:40pm: After some handshakes and hugs, they're read to rock. The Discovery Channel production chief kicks us off the set, because they're about to start shooting discussions among Reed and Co. about the day's situation. We wait in a nearby parking lot, but as we do, we see the first tornado watch of the day pop up in western Kansas. Excitement is bubbling.
12:58pm: We FINALLY get out on the road..."finally" because a multitude of chasers have already dispersed throughout Oklahoma and Kansas to get into position. We head north on I-35 towards Guthrie.
1:31pm: The first tornado warning fires in southwest Kansas. Supercells are also inititating in western Oklahoma. Meanwhile, we see a big van on the highway with the word "Funnel Cakes" on the back end. A good sign...?
2:10pm: We exit I-35 and begin heading west on state highway 51 towards Hennessey to get in position to catch the cells in western Oklahoma. The Dominator is about 20 miles ahead...
2:13pm: Our van suddenly loses a hubcap.
2:38pm: The cell we're chasing is starting to look very impressive, and goes tornado warned. We turn north on highway 81 towards Enid. We can begin to see the back of the anvil from our storm:
3:18pm: We run out of highway, but continue northward on a county road. We can see the base of the supercell in the distance now to our west. We all get a chuckle that we're headed straight for Wakita, which is referenced in the movie Twister and home to a museum dedicated to said movie.
Our guide, Dave, gets a text from Chris, one of the lucky gents in the Dominator, informing us that they're going for the intercept just a mile to the west.
It's really flat out here:
3:28pm: After turning west onto state highway 11, we catch up to the Dominator and the Discovery Channel production crew. We were not-so-gently forbidden from getting in any shots, so we keep our distance. After a minute or two, they take off, and we follow behind.
Not 30 seconds later, we get what we came for. A funnel descends from the wall cloud, touching down right before our eyes:
We get out of the van for a closer look, but it ascends fairly quickly. And that's when it REALLY started to get crazy.
I hate to do this to you, but as I'm writing this, we're working on chasing one last day today in western Oklahoma. I'd probably better start paying attention, as new storms will be firing within a few hours. Still time for one last hurrah! No worries, I'll finish up the story later tonight, hopefully.
(How was THAT for a teaser?)
2 comments:
Whoa, I need one of those cars.
sounds awesome! can't wait for the pics!
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