May 18, 2025

Apparently turtles can eject a large amount of water as a defense mechanism. I learned this the hard way when we stopped to move this guy off the highway and my jeans were absolutely soaked.

Team Turtle on the chase once more.

We grabbed lunch at the Subway in Medicine Lodge, avoiding the huge chaser convergence at the gas station on the south side of town. Conditions were cool and foggy, not good for tornadic supercells. Not yet at least, but visibile satellite showed towering cumulus going up in the far northeast Texas Panhandle, which would send storms into an extremely favorable environment in the open Oklahoma warm sector. We assumed our target was hosed and moved on the southern play. It took us quite awhile to stair step down to Arnett, OK. Our speeding days are over, and we came in about twenty to thirty minutes too late. Heading west to get a view of the super hazy LP storm, we drove past the "conga line": Hundreds and hundreds of chasers moving east, leaving the show as we were only just arriving.

With no way to turn around due to the traffic, we had no choice except to head to the back of the line. It didn't matter though, the tornado show was over, and the soupy skies were so low contrast you could barely even see the storm from a few miles out.

We stair stepped for miles east and north before the crowds thinned, many probably calling it a day. We found a cemetary outside of some small town and pulled in to get off the road. We tucked in next to the maintenance shed in the far back corner, quietly watching the LP from some distance, trying to be out of the way, bothering no one. Still, some Okie came by to chew us out for using their sacred yet stolen burial grounds for storm chasing purposes. I hate Oklahoma.

We moved in for one last shot of the storm, the withering LP finally putting on a little show in the pretty evening light. Chuck and Carrie stopped to say hi, then we called it a chase and headed into to Enid for the night.