Storm Chase Details
Chase Date: May 10, 2010
Miles Logged: 1332
States Chased: OK
Tornadoes Witnessed: 4
Largest Hail Encountered: 2"
Highest Wind Encountered: 70MPH
Severe Risks: SPC Outlooks
Chase Recap:
Pre Chase/Mothers Day
Monday May 10th was a day most storm chasers had seen quite a bit of potential in for quite a few days leading up to the event. Model run-to-run consistency had been very good in painting a grim picture for Oklahoma.
I had originally asked for the time off on Wednesday the previous week. I planned to take Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday off, and I would leave for Oklahoma City on Sunday afternoon after having lunch with my mom for Mothers day.
Eric Treece is going to Join
Sunday Morning I started talking to Eric Treece. Eric is a fellow chaser, and captain of the Wilfred Sykes freighter on the great lakes. He had given up hope on Saturday night that he would have a chance to make Oklahoma on Monday. Eric was delayed time and time again. We started looking at flights and started seriously talking about having him fly down to Tulsa, as he would be getting off the boat hopefully Sunday night. He still had to beat another ship into port.
It turns out he did, and got a ride to Green Bay from Escanaba, then rented a car in Green Bay where he drove to Milwaukee and got an hour or two nap before his flight from Milwaukee to Tulsa with a switch in Houston.
I started driving down Sunday after lunch and made it to Joplin, MO before stopping at the Motel 6 for the evening. I got a decent night sleep, having gotten into Joplin somewhere around 12:30 am.
Monday Morning
Monday I woke up around 8, got breakfast then headed towards Tulsa. I was on the road by 10 to Oklahoma. Eric missed his connection from Houston to Tulsa because his Milwaukee to Houston flight left on time but was late in getting into Houston. Strong headwinds! Luckily we were able to get him on another flight an hour later, which would turn out to be fine as I pulled up to the airport in Tulsa about the time he was walking out.
Perry Pit Stop
Once I got Eric into the truck, we decided we needed to get west and in a hurry. We took the 412 turnpike out of Tulsa towards Stillwater, and ended up eventually gassing up and stopping at Wal Mart in Perry so Eric could get a few items including a tripod.
Enid
We decided to still target towards Enid, and headed that way, arriving in time to top off the tank. We ran into Shane Adams and Mickey Ptak as we pulled into the gas station. There was already a cell going up to the west of there, however, I was almost convinced we would never catch up to it. While we were topping the tank off, I went and said hi to Shane. Shane was heading out right then to go after that cell, and was convinced he could catch it.
Chase on
Eric and I decided to follow, ending up in a convoy up US 60 in an intercept route for this storm. We got to US 64 then headed west to Nash. In Nash we decided to make a turn to the north, up state route 132. The rest of the convoy had also decided to make this turn, except for Shane who pulled off and got behind us all.
We headed up to just before State Route 11. Eric and I bailed west on a dirt road for a few miles unitl we came up to an area where we could clearly see the base of the storm. It was still obviously high based, but managed to form a wall cloud before we decided we needed to keep up with it and get further east. We headed up to SR-11 and then east. We ended up stopping 5 miles east of the SR-132 paved option, and setup tripods.
Tornado Time
It was about this time the storm really started getting organized, dropping the first tornado which was a carrot funnel which had a small debris swirl at the bottom. Then a minute or so later the big tornado formed from the rapidly rotating mesocyclone. Eric and I got the initial touchdown tripod-ed and were in a perfect viewing position.
Wakita Oklahoma Tornado
The tornado turned multivortex right away, and then dropped a satellite tornado in the field right in front of us. With storm motions of 60+ MPH, we didn’t have a long time period to sit and enjoy the tornado. I was convinced it was going to turn into a huge wedge, and that we needed to get further south so we didn’t end up being accidental tornado debris.
It’s moving away too fast
We bailed south a couple of miles, setting up for another shot before heading east at a rapid speed. We headed towards Medford on the dirt road network, eventually going north and stopping so we could watch what appeared to be a huge wedge. Our lighting and vantage point wasn’t the greatest, so it didn’t show up the greatest on our video.
Eventually we got to US81 and took it north into Medford. We pretty much knew there wasn’t much of a chance we’d catch back up with the storm. We were behind, but headed north on 81 anyway. A few miles in, we got to downed powerlines and had to turn around.
Storm 2
Opting not to take dirt roads, we backtracked to Medford and then headed east on OK11. We went past I-35 and dropped south on US77 towards Ponca City.
We headed east out of Ponca City and had to core punch the storm coming out of Ponca along US 60. We made it through the storm and then into the clearing on the far side. There was a lot of rotation with this storm and we witnessed a very brief touch down near US60.
We followed this storm east to Pawhuska before giving up on it and deciding to bail south and east towards the beast of a cell in the Oklahoma City metro area.
South and then back east on the turnpike to Tulsa. We editing some video and got it online at this point of the Medford storm.
We took the Muskogee Turnpike southeast out of Tulsa all the way down to I-40, just getting in front of the monster supercell coming east. The storm had monster inflow of 50-70 MPH. Eric and I had trouble holding our tripods up and steady.
While the storm presentation was great on radar, visually it wasn’t all that great and we ended up following it to Sallisaw, OK before giving up on it and deciding to get some Pizza Hut and a hotel room for the night.
We turned the TV in the hotel room to The Weather Channel and watched all the video and damage from the day.
