Anticipation for a
multiple day chase was in the works.
We left late Thursday evening and met up
with Brian Stertz in Overland Park,
Kansas. After a few hours of sleep at
his place, we set out at daybreak for our
target in Southwest Oklahoma. The
initial target was Duncan, Oklahoma. A
quick stop at the Pizza Hut in Moore,
Oklahoma and then took a tour of the tornado
path from the EF5 tornado we watched back on
May 20, 2013. Still remnants of damage
to be seen nearly four years later. As we
traveled and watched the data, the target
began shifting westward. First to
Lawton, Oklahoma, then to Altus,
Oklahoma. Since we still had a bit of
extra time before storm initiation, we took
another side trip up to the top of Mt. Scott
in southwest Oklahoma to take in the scenes
and the wildlife, then met up with Jeff
Piotrowski at a Mexican Diner in
Altus.
Storms were
scheduled to erupt near or after dark
along the warm front to the north and
along the dryline to the west. We
positioned ourselves just north of Elmer,
Oklahoma right before dark and played the
waiting game. Weather models
continued to have trouble deciphering the
data just like they had the entire week
prior. Each model made picking the
prime spot impossible. We stuck with
the idea that big storms would erupt
between 8:00pm-10:00pm around Altus,
Oklahoma although there was no sign in the
sky of that happening.
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As we waited, a
few storms were going up 50 miles to the
northwest of us. We watched as they
went up, but knew since these storms were in
the cooler air, they may produce hail, but
there was little chance of tornadoes, so we
waited to the south of the warm front.
Darkness fell on us. As the storms
back-built, they kept toying with reaching
the warmer, juicier air, but they just could
not make it down that far. We
continued to hold out hope as we continued
to look at the data with Jeff as we
waited.
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Eventually, the
longer we waited, the more convinced we
became that the storms were not going to
happen. We made the decision to give
up on the possibility of tornadic supercells
around 10:30pm and made our way east to grab
a hotel in Oklahoma City and get some sleep
before the long drive to get into position
for the storms the following day. We
drove through some of the rain on the
northern storms on the way to Oklahoma City
and one of the interesting events of the day
was driving by some kind of refinery.
We could see this orange glow in the sky
through some very heavy rain even from
several miles away. When we approached
the area, we saw two out of the ordinary,
huge flames shooting from a couple of the
stacks. We drove by them as they sat
right next to the interstate and could hear
very loud alarms going off at the
refinery. Never did find out what was
going on, but we did not stop and got the
heck out of there.
Around 2:00am,
all of us were suddenly awaken after about
an hour of sleep by a huge roar outside the
hotel window. Winds of 80+mph, Hail,
and Torrential Rains slammed into the hotel
and for a couple of minutes, made us wonder
about our safety. This storm knocked
the power out in the hotel for the rest of
our stay. Turns out, this squall line
originated back around Altus, Oklahoma
around midnight where we had been waiting
for storms to erupt just a few hours
earlier. Although it produced no
tornadoes, this storm ended up doing much
damage to trees and powerlines along its
path. This storm took us so much by
surprise with our startled awakening, we
never even thought to grab the camera or
camcorder, so no pictures out of the hotel
window.
(Total 2 day Trip) 54 Hours
- 1515
Miles
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Click
on the link below to see video of some
of these storms.
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April 28, 2017 
