Left from Fort Smith, Arkansas around 11am and headed West on I-40. From I-40 took the Muskogee Turnpike through Tulsa and from Tulsa we continued westward on the Cimarron Turnpike. Around 2pm we arrived in Perry, OK just off of I-35. We looked at the latest weather data and it seemed like we were in a descent location to let the storms come to us. However around 3pm i decided we should head further west toward Okeene, OK. We took hwy 164 down to hwy 51 and continued west toward Okeene. It was now close to 4pm and we finally started to the see the skies darken to our west with the approach of the storms we had been watching on radar. It was just past Hennessey when we could actually start to see some actual storm structure. Directly to our west was a pretty intense thunderstorm but my attention was directed further southwest where just seperated by a line of blue skie from the storm to our west was a much more serious looking storm. You could clearly see the beautiful bright white top of a very impressive storm with the back westward edge showing intense convective clouds. We decided to head toward this further away storm.
We continued on Hwy 51 to Canton and turned left heading south on Hwy 58 toward and through Eagle City. We continued on 58 south past jct 270 where it became HWY 33. We were near Fay, OK at about 620 (est) when we began to encounter hail. We nearly turned around due to the ever increasing size and reports of baseball size hail coming from the storm but we continued on only because the opposing lane of traffic still had the windshields. We managed to sneak through only slightly dented.
At
644pm the NWS in Norman issued a TORNADO WARNING for Custer
County in Western Oklahoma. The report said the DOW and
storm spotters reported a tornado 4 miles wouthwest of Thomas
moving East at 30 MPH. We took HWY 54 south from NEAR
THOMAS hoping to make it through before the tornado. We noticed
moments later the DOW and storm spotters on the side of the road
looking northwest toward Thomas. We just missed the tornado
as it had apparently become rain-wrapped but we sat back and
watched for a few moments as we finally we able to realize the
intense magnitude of this storm. We then decided to
take a small road that took us to Hydron on I-40 and then we
would head East on I-40 to 281 then take that North to Geary and
over to Calumet and from there we would decide our nex
step. Along the way to Hydro the chasers began to get quite
thick. We were all treated to an awesome show as the
intense MESO took in red dust from several miles to the south and
inhaled it (see pic below).
I knew that more than likely there was a tornado wrapped in there
somewhere. We finally got to I-40 and sped west to HWY 281
toward Geary.
It
was looking like the storm had somehow managed to get more in
front of us than i though it would and i was wondering if we
would be able to catch up before dark. We finally made it
to JCT 270 and headed back East trying to catch up. We
reached Calumet around 8 pm and we were still behind the
storm. We decided to try and find a road that connected to
81 and if we could get over there we might could catch up.
We headed North from Calumet only about two miles before i
noticed a interesting looking site to my Northwest. The
time was 8:07pm. After a few moments of watching i realized
i was indeed looking at a Funnel cloud. I was a little
confused as to why there was a funnel cloud in front of me with
the center of circ several miles off to the ENE from our
position. In fact it appeared as though this funnel cloud
was on the very back edge of the storm. The funnel cloud
crossed the road (looking at my video later you can actually see
a small debris cloud crossing the road a mile or two in front and
for much of the track debris can barely be seen) and continued
East. A minute or so later we clearly noticed some debris
lifting off the ground as the Funnel dipped lower to more than
halfway to ground only to dance back up toward cloud base.
At 8:13pm the funnel made complete contact with the ground for
about 5 seconds before lifting quickly vanishing back into the
clouds. We observed a few moments later the funnel coming
back down and there was what appeared to be a power flash(see pic
below...and looking at my video later you can see this funnel was
in fact in touch with the ground again..paused on a lightning
strike that was near it you can see it in contact with the
ground) but after a few minutes the contrast began to worsen and
so we decided to try and find that road and cut across to HWY
81.
Calumet, OK Tornado Time Lapse Video
We finally found the road but only after 20 costly minutes of searching. We made it to Concho and headed up 81 to HWY 3. From there we continued on the Toll Pike. The whole time we are continuing to hear about possible tornadoes just to our NE and we saw a few ominous lowerings during the lightning but nothing confirmed. We took the I-35 exit north. North of Edmond we finally caught back up with the storm. Unfortunately everyone else apparently caught up to. It was very dangerous with cars parked under overpasses and people walking, running, and standing everywhere along and on the interstate, all the while vehicles whizzing by at over 70 MPH barely able to see the pedestrians. We continued on for a few more miles and pulled over on a slight rise to see if we could get a peak of the storm with help of the lightning. We noticed we were parked right in front of mile marker 146. We soon heard on the radio how the circulation was near mile marker 146. A few seconds later we were buffetted by winds probably over 60-70 mph and i thought that any second we would be flung into the air. We made it through unharmed but not unfazed so we decided to head home. However i wasnt quite ready to be done with the storm yet so i decided to plan our route home for a possible meeting later with this storm. We went back south and took HWY 66 East and it was near Wellston when we noticed our fuel gage on empty. We finally (after several anxious miles) found a gas station in Chandler. We continued off to the Northeast on Route 66 through Stroud. Near Bristow we realized we were nearing back in on the storm and from the reports of funnel clouds and large tornadoes still coming from the storm we knew we still might be able to get back in on the show. Spotters were reporting possible tornadoes North of Bristow. Route 66 at Bristow goes North across the interstate so now we knew we were getting close. We made our way toward Kellyville being very cautious. We knew there could be a tornado nearby or that one could form any second. Along the way east toward Kellyville we did what appeared to be a large funnel cloud illuminated by lightning. We were near Kellyville when i heard what sounded to me like a Jet engine to our North. Not expecting there were any jets flying through a intense HP supercell at dark i realized i was probably hearing the tornado itself. It sounded somewhat distant but if i had to guess it was probably with 3 miles of us to the north-northwest. A few minutes later we were buffeted again by very strong RFD winds wrapping around.
We contined on after a while and headed toward Sapulpa. We finally decided to abandon our chase here as we didnt want to endure the madness of possible nighttime tornadoes going through downtown Tulsa. The storm actually continued on to near the Arkansas-Oklahoma border. POST STORM CHASE ANALYSIS This first radar echoes that can be associated with this storm popped up in the extreme eastern part of the Texas Panhandle region near the oklahoma border and north of the Red River a little before 3pm. The storms last radar echoes faded from radar near the Oklahoma, Missouri, and Akansas borders around 3am The storm was in a near steady state for over 9 hours and had radar echoes directly associated with in for a solid 12 hours. Tracking from the extreme southwest Oklahoma to extreme northeast Oklahoma. Affecting Oklahoma's two most populous cities Tulsa and Oklahoma City as well as dozens of other smaller cities and communities. This will definately go down as one of the most long lived and intense supercell storms to affect Oklahoma. I think the most interesting aspect to this particular storm was the appearance of several small tornadoes along the back edge of the storm when it was in central Oklahoma. After looking over my video...actually while i was rewinding it i noticed it was spinning counter-clockwise (cyclonic). This was odd since if you are rewinding a video it should spin the opposite of what it did in reality. Once i hit play i realized what was going on. This funnel cloud and tornado were obviously rotating the wrong direction. Apparently only 1 out of 100 tornadoes rotate anti-cyclonically. My first tornado i see and its one of the rarest.