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Wow! The first two weeks of May 2003 have seen some incredible tornado
activity throughout the United States. The previous day, May 9, Moore
and southern OKC were once again ravaged by a violent F4 tornado.
Unfortunately, the tornado took nearly the same path and destroyed some
of the same places that were hit by the F5 of May 3, 1999. I was unable
to chase on May 8 due to a Final Exam. Tornadoes also occurred during
the night of May 7-8 in southwestern and south-central Oklahoma.
I had a Dynamics final during the afternoon.
Luckily, I was able to get it done and still go chase. Last final of
my Junior year at OU. Going on a chase sounded like a good way to end
the semester and relieve some stress. Instead, it would prove to be an
action-filled and very stressful chase.
Target: Elgin, OK
Chase Partners:
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Brian Porter
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Location:
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Western, Central, and Eastern Oklahoma
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Miles Travelled:
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410 Miles (during chase); 560 Miles (total travel)
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Total Time:
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12 Hours
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The dryline that produced the previous day's storms retreated overnight
back across far western Oklahoma. The stage was set again for another
significant severe weather event, although this one did not have quite
an obvious look to it. After finishing my Dynamics exam, I rounded up
classmate and big brother from Kappa Kappa Psi, Brian Porter, and we
took off for SW OK.
We left Norman at 4:15pm and headed SW towards
Chickasha on I-44. Along the way, we decided to change our target to
Chickash since there were better road options available. After
arriving in Chickasha and grabbing some food, a Tornado Watch was
issued for most of Oklahoma. Also, a storm had just exploded WSW of
Anadarko, OK (Storm-A). We sped west towards Anadarko and north on
US-281 towards Gracemont.
At 6:36pm, we were located about 3 miles north of
Gracemont. The storm was directly west of our position set to cross in
front of us near Binger.  A very well-defined wall cloud became
visible. Eventually, we began receiving some hail and rain from the
anvil, so we headed north on US-281 about a mile or two. A
wedge-shaped funnel developed right in front of us, thankfully, with
better visiblitiy than the wall cloud (5.1 MB). The funnel started looking
pretty good, but quickly dissipates and attempts to cycle. We contined
to follow Storm-A north towards Binger, staying on the S-SE side. At
Binger, we stopped on OK-152 to watch the storm. We turned east to
follow it towards OKC, but the storm began to weaken and did not look
as impressive as before. However, at this time we hear amateur radio
reports of a new, bigger storm developing in SW OK (Storm-B). This
storm was moving towards Cordell, OK. Being the only game in town, we
took off on US-152 west to Cordell.
At about 8:11pm, one of the wall clouds crosses
OK-54 less than a mile away (2.4 MB). We wait for it to cross the highway, then
turned east onto OK-152 and followed the storm. Someone reported a
tornado on the gorund with this storm about 8 minutes later. We
continued east on OK-152 still keeping a visual on the wall cloud. It
was about 8:45pm, and it was getting dark, so we decided to call off
the chase for the day. We headed north on OK-59 towards I-40. After
hearing no more radio traffic for 25 minutes, I turned it off. Once on
I-40, we hit an extremely heavy rain core. I didn't know what was
happening. We exited I-40 at the Anadarko exit, made it to a truck
stop, and called my TV station in Tulsa for an update. We must have
been out of radio range or something. We learned that Storm-B and
cycled and had produced a tornado near Union City, OK.
The precip core and hook echo forced us to take an
indirect route that put us 15 minutes behind the stomr. We were never
able to catch up with it. We kept hearing reports of power flashes and
debris on the western and northern sides of OKC. We continued to
follow the back side of the storm through OKC checking for damage. We
did find some damage on Lake Hefner Parkway just north of Baptist
Medical Center in OKC. We were able to see some power flashes to our
NE. The tornado passed right through "Media Row" in north OKC where
all three major TV station are located.
We finally made it to the Turner Turnpike gate
about 11:30pm. After showing my media credentials, I was able to get
passed the Oklahoma Highway Patrol's roadblock at the OKC gate. The
tornado was only about 10 miles down the road. We got to Wellston, but
OHP had another roadblock set up and refused to let anybody pass. We
tried unsuccessfully to get into Stroud to get damage video for that
station. The storm was headed straight for Glenpool, and I began to
get worried. I wanted to catch it.
We were forced to go north out of Chandler on
OK-18, then west to Sapulpa on OK-33. By the time we hit Cushing,
Storm-B had reached Glenpool. Damage was reported in a mobile home
park three miles outh of my house. We made it into Tulsa at 4:20am.
After a brief stop at the station to discuss the day's events, we
finally crashed at my house at about 5:30am. We got up at 10:30am and
returned to Norman. As we went through Moore and south OKC, we drove
through the areas that were affected on May 8. The damage was
incredible.
SUMMARY:
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Another historic chase day. I didn't see any tornadoes, but I was on
the storm as it was in its initial tornadoic developement stages.
Still just as exciting.
This has been an incredible two weeks
to begin May. You never wish for something like this to happen, but if
it must, I've always hoped I would be in school during it that way I
could study it later and say I was there for it.
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