May 10, 2010 North Central Oklahoma Tornadoes
Sunday night Chris, Evan and I left for Wichita around 7:30p.m. Around York we had a quarter tank left and Chris thought he could make it to Salina, well we probably could have made it if we hadn't trusted the GPS on finding the nearest gas station. We end up getting real low and the GPS tells us there is a gas station in Bennington, KS about 3 miles west of the highway, we try it, closed. Another one on the south side of town was closed too. So then we tried to make it to Salina, when we got back to the highway we made it about 2 miles before it died. Luckily we coasted into a rest stop! lol. Chris calls his insurance and we get a guy out there with gas in about an hour! Good thing that we screwed up before the chase day and not during it. Got to our hotel room around 2a.m. in Wichita. Woke up around 10a.m. to fog and 50F temps! We checked morning data and checked out of the hotel headed west towards Pratt. Stopped for lunch in Goddard, then continued southwest out of the fog/drizzle. Around Medicine lodge we see something on radar down in Oklahoma. Intercept the first storm near Carmen, Oklahoma. Had a nicely separated updraft base/downdraft.
we got a little behind it south and missed the multivortex tornado SW of Wakita on hwy 11. Going north on hwy 38 from hwy 64 we saw a tornado with a lot of dust underneath. Stopped real quick to take a picture, but was in too much of a hurry to change settings, doh! so I had to brighten this one, its pretty noisey, oh well.
We now decided to get on dirt roads to keep up with it since it was producing. Eventually got onto hwy 11 where we encountered INSANE chaser convergence. Saw a chaser who had all his windows blown out, I'm guessing he was in the multivortex tornado. Also saw baseball sized hail on the ground and extensive tornado damage to barns and trees, a lot of powerlines down too. This storm was still trying, but we were out of position to see the main meso due to Chasers driving slow on hwy 11, we weren't able to keep up with it. But on the backside we witnessed a short lived tornado that condensed just a little bit more than this at one point. Rotation was insane right now, we got data back west of Medford and it looked like a beast on radar.
We tried to keep up with it but didn't think we could get north fast enough, so we ditched it for another supercell to the south. We had to core the storm to get south of the precip, had blinding rain and hail up to golfball sized, luckily we missed the softballs! We finally get into position south of hwy 60 west of Pawhuska and let the storm come to us.
Now this thing was rotating like mad everywhere when this thing passes over us, I have never seen such violent motion in the sky. The inflow was incredible, just a constant 30-40mph SE wind. Suddenly we spot a stovepipe tornado to our west! There are also two funnels in this shot!
This lasts about a minute and I tell Chris we should go north to get closer to it, but it lifts. We are all out of the car on this gravel road watching areas of rotation when a 70mph wind gust plows through and we scramble to get back into the car but the car was facing north with a SE wind I could barely get my door shut, Chris had even more trouble than I did. In fact Chris door is now broken thanks to those winds, I'm sure they were at least 60mph, probably closer to 70, for about 20 seconds. The motions were just unbelievable. I will be getting a video camera before next season, as often times photos don't do these storms justice, like this day. So yeah I'm going to get a video camera next instead of upgrading my camera body I think. Anyway, we continued back to the highway to follow it east towards Pawhuska, while on the highway we witnessed another tornado to our north that lasted about 30 seconds. These photos are really crappy sorry about the quality we didn't have time to stop and take pictures. Right as this tornado lifted we passed Reed Timmer and the discovery crew filming on hwy 60.
After this it might have produced again about 5 miles further east, but can't confirm since we didn't see any debris under the funnel. We called it a day and went to sonic in Independence, KS Crazy day. Probably saw nearly 20 funnels and 4 tornadoes. First Kansas tornado two weeks ago and my first Oklahoma tornadoes a couple weeks later! Still looks quiet for the middle of the month, really not liking the death ridge the gfs is showing.
|
