Convective Outlook
Tornado PotentialMother Nature played one helluva "April Fool's" joke on chasers today. The SPC issued a moderate outlook for far western Oklahoma with a 15% hatched area spanning most of of the moderate area. Chasers from all around were talking about the day turning out to be a large outbreak of tornadoes, similar to the May 3, 1999 outbreak. The day was set to be worth the 500 mile round trip across the state, and with storms moving NE, it would shorten the drive home back to Tulsa.
Myself, my girlfriend, and my buddy Philip set out late in the morning to head towards I-40 close to the OK/TX state line. What followed should have been a sign that nothing good was going to come of the day. About 40 minutes into our drive down I-44, I noticed my car was beginning to run hot, and with temperatures only in the 80's forecasted for the day, I was a little worried, but it never got to a critical level, so we kept on the road. We stopped to fuel in Oklahoma City and when I was coming back out from the restroom, Jennifer and Philip said a guy had told them something was leaking underneath my car. So I backed it up some and we looked and the decent sized oil puddle that was on the ground. After checking the oil level, we determined it was just a small leak, but traveling at highway speeds it was pooling somewhere under the car and when I stopped, it all drained out to the ground. So we added a quart to make up for the leakage and continued. Then I notice some issue with the camera my buddy Matt loaned me. It wasn't staying connected to charge. So we fiddled with it and nothing, couldn't get power to it at all. So by this point I was rather agitated at the fact there was supposed to be decent tornadoes in the area and I had no camera to tape them with. Fortunately Philip had a camera that could capture video, so I figured it's better than nothing, and at least we would be able to see them personally if nothing else. Then, while on I-40 west towards Elk City, all of a sudden we heard a bang on the roof of the car and my light bar cord pulled tight and snagged my my seat. I promptly pulled over and for the first time ever, my light bar (held on by four 25 lbs magnets) had come off and knocked over all of my antenna's and anemometer. At the point I reached "boiling" and added a new non-hail dent to one of my doors. Luckily nothing had broken and the cord I fashioned for my light bar held tight so it didn't fall off or even break the cord. So we added a set of zip-ties to secure the light and went on our way.
We stopped in Sayre to re-fuel and wait for initiation of the storms. After about an hour, they began to fire and I tried to find somewhere to get a wi-fi connection, as there was no weather radio reception where we were at. We couldn't find anything, so we turned to head south, thanks to Matt and Justin tipping me off with their radar observations. We sat a few miles south of Sayre for the cell to move over. It was a decent looking cell with nice structure and a prominent wall cloud with some small hail. We followed the cell as it sort of cycled from good looking to crap. It finally lost my interest and we headed for another cell down the road that was headed over the Elk-City/I-40 area. It again looked alright and then turned to crap. By this point, all of the cells in the area were being eaten up by the developing squall line. As soon as we lost almost all light, we began heading back for Tulsa, in the rain... all the way home. This reminded my of the last chase in that area with Justin and Joseph where we busted and it rained on us all the way home. Such a lovely way to end a horrible day. At least we got to see a few decent cells before they jumped on the squall-line bandwagon and we met a few cool chasers too! One guy, Dave, and his wife were out and were also in a Pathfinder, same body-style as mine, so I had to stop and say "hi". Pretty cool guy, let me tell you. We were both on the cell south of Sayre and he was very cool about letting me take a peek at his radar so I could see what we were working with. Thanks Dave, hope to see you again!
Storm Reports (Tornado - 1)Out of all of the hype and the 15% potential area, only one tornado came from the area today, and it was in Kansas around the 10% potential area.
