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Chase Day: October 9, 2001 |
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Chase Logs -
2001 Chases Logs
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Written by Chris Nuttall
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Wednesday, 10 October 2001 |
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Conditions were ripe for explosive thunderstorms up and down the
western OK-TX border. EHI values in SW OK and NW OK were high. Shear
profiles were extremely favorable for supercells. A storm had already
gone severe in Beckham County in western Oklahoma. It had only been
severe for about 30 minutes when we left, but it was already highly
organized and exhibited the classic "screaming eagle" look on radar.
Seeing this as an indication of thing to come, we headed north thinking
that storms would pop all along north and south on the dryline.
I was not expecting to score a fall chase between
marching band practices and their already rare occurrences, so this was
a welcome surprise.
Target: Seiling, OK
| Chase Partners: |
Kyle Mozley, Dusty Maddox, Aaron Kennedy,
Nathan White, Liz Stoppkotte
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Location:
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W Oklahoma
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Miles Traveled:
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180
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Total Time:
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8 Hours
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We left Norman at 2:30pm and headed north on I-35, west on I-40, and
north on US-281 towards Seiling. We were socked in by a heavy cloud
deck for most the trip. The clouds were associated with showers and
storms occurring in central and eastern Oklahoma.
At 4:45pm, we arrived in Seiling and I tried to make a quick call to
Tulsa for some nowcasts, but I kept losing the cell phone connection.
We continued east on OK-51 and soon broke through the cloud deck. We
had just heard a Tornado Warning had been issued to our south and a
Tornado Watch had also been issued.  We emerged from the cloud deck and
could clearly see the storm. We were sure that something would fire
our way. Instead, more tornadic storms were firing south of the first
cell. Little did we know as we sat and waited for storms to fire in
our area, other chasers were having a hay-day. Sixty miles to our
south and F3 was roaring through Cordell, OK. All the storms around
went through a merge and finally formed a monstrous supercell with
baseball-sized hail. We finally decided nothing would happen in NW OK,
so we turned around and took off for the massive cell (Storm-A). We
could see the mammatus shield and the incredible updraft even though we
were over 30 miles away.
About the time it got dark, we exited onto US-281 near Weatherford.
Spotters were reporting a large tornado on the ground about 10 miles
south of us. We were able to clearly see the meso even though it was
dark. It was very well defined. We were on the NW side of the hook
echo trying to swing around it. We pulled over still hearing spotters
reporting a tornado on the ground just south of us. We continued to
follow the storm along OK-152 and eventually into Moore, OK. Along the
way, we stopped several times to watch wall clouds during lightning
flashes.
The storm eventually moved east of the OKC Metro and weakened. We arrived back at the dorms at 10:05pm.
SUMMARY:
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Overall, it was a good chase. NWS-OUN said that this was the worst
October outbreak in Oklahoma history, and the most significant outbreak
in the Southern Plains since May 3, 1999. If we had only been 60 miles
to the south....After looking at archived data, we found that the
storms had developed on a small bulge along the dryline.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 14 June 2008 )
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