Warm sector chase in Oklahoma. Intercept early afternoon tornado warned HP north of Enid noting rain bands. Moved to I-40 intercepting storm near Hinton, OK noting gust front. Caught wall cloud on cell near Perry by evening before ending chase at dark in the Osage Wind Farm.
Crew and Equipment
Solo chase. Equipment: Sony AX100, Canon 60D with EFS 10-22, Samsung S9.
Video
Map
Details
Day 2 of a Plains run. I considered just driving home after the previous day's tough break missing the tornado extravaganza across eastern Nebraska. Despite higher tornado probabilities, 15 hatched vs the previous day's 10 hatched, I knew nothing like that was going to happen with this setup. Tornadoes looked likely, but storm mode was an issue with possible HP modes with low, grungy bases. Pretty much the norm for Oklahoma. I decided to stick out, however. Maybe I would get lucky and get a tornado and redeem myself a bit from the previous day's miss. I snaked my south through Nebraska, Kansas, and into northern Oklahoma.
I was punching through an east west line of ongoing thunderstorms, early activity that was not my primary target, when a nearby cell started to organize. It looked to go tornadic and sure enough picked up a warning just as I arrived. I sat downstream several miles and waited for it, rather than getting in close on the unpaved grid. Skies were hazy, and a low contrast HP supercell finally emerged. The warning was upgraded for a confirmed tornado, although I had no visual on it a few miles to the northeast through the murk and rain. I let the storm approach and I was deep within the inflow notch as it started to get close. Dark streaks moved around RFD core and I was convinced I had a rain wrapped tornado in my shot. I lingered as long as safety permitted before bailing east to get out from under the storm. After reviewing my footage, however, all I could find were streaky rain bands and nothing that looked tornadic.
I went after a new storm down by I-40. This storm was also HP and murky, but also gusted out early. It had a gnarly gust front on it, and I wasn't about to chase it back into El Reno and OKC so I abandoned it and retargeted northeast.
I called the chase at dusk and wound up camping in the Osage Wind Farm at the gate of an access road leading to a windmill. Storms rocked the van overnight.
Conclusion
Given a lack of both dramatic supercell structure or tornadoes for what was a very volatile setup with anticipated outbreak, this chase underperformed for me. Most of the storms I chased were grungy HPs, which is often the case down in Oklahoma, and pretty much what I was expecting. I was looking for a little redemption after the previous day's chase, but there was none to be found here.
