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Central Oklahoma - 09 October 2001
Well, this is the chase that almost didn't happen, and it is also the chase that I wish we could do over again. A moderate risk had been issued for northwest Oklahoma, and our original target area was Woodward. Aaron, Liz, Matt, and I piled in to da egg and followed Chris, Kyle, and Dusty in Chris's car. As we were turning on Chatauqua in Norman, my car hydroplaned briefly because of the rain and we almost ran into Chris's car. (Other than that, da egg did a great job storm chasing).
We left around 2:30, knowing that we would be right on time for the event. There were two areas that we could go to, one being the southwest and the other where we were going, to the northwest. We knew one storm had fired in Beckham County, and as we were traveling we heard that it went severe. Holding to our forecast, we kept going. As activity increased in the south, we noticed not much was happening to our north. However, because of the low clouds most of the way, we did not realize just how much activity was going on to the south. 4 or 5 supercells formed south of us and nothing formed within 100 miles to the north. We stayed north too long and missed out on the tornado outbreak.
We then raced back down south to salvage something, but it was getting dark quickly. If only it were May. We came around the backside of the supercell that gobbled all the other ones up and got some great views of mammatus. (Check out Aaron's site for the different kinds we saw :) After dark we learned of the tornado that wiped out a third of Cordell (site of our last tornado on May 5). We continued driving and stopped at one place where we saw awesome rotation. The storm was backbuilding and we found out that we were 5 miles away from a nice wedge tornado, but it was dying and we saw the regeneration of it. However, it did not materialize. I had never seen anything as wild or amazing as that, and I'm surprised that it didn't form another tornado.
In order to get back to Norman, we had to drive through the storm for it was directly in our path. However, between the lightning we could still see strong rotation and several tornado warnings were issued for the storm. Another storm formed in front of it just before dark, spawning more tornado warnings. We were on Highway 37 and we could see one area of rotation to our east and another to our north. We kept stopping every few miles to get out and observe them. At one point we stopped right in a warm air updraft, for there was no wind and it was noticeably warmer than other places we had stopped on the way.
We continued as the storms headed for south OKC, Moore, and north parts of Norman, almost mirroring May 3rd tracks. The storm held its own for several hours after dark, and a look at radar when we got back reported that at times it had VILS at 75. This was the first true supercell I had ever seen, and even though we weren't among the many who saw numerous tornadoes, the incredible things that we saw were worth it.
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