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This wound up being Day 2 or a rough week for eastern Oklahoma. The
was Day 2 of a stretch of four days of severe weather. Tornadoes
occurred each day somewhere in the state. Tornadic supercells passed
right through the heart of the Tulsa Metro area on two of these days
dropping tornadoes just to the east of the City.
On this day, the dryline was set up just west of
Oklahoma City. I really didn't expect much from this day. Instead, I
came away with some of my best pictures and videos so far.
Target: Shawnee, OK
Chase Partners:
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Brian Porter
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Location:
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Central and Eastern Oklahoma
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Miles Travelled:
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300
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Total Time:
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7 Hours
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5:00pm (2200 UTC)
I wasn't able to chase until late due to an exam. I had all of my gear
with me just in case. I met Brian Porter on the top floow of the
Oklahoma Memorial Stadium parking garage to watch a wall cloud pass to
the north of Norman. There were two more storms developing south of
Norman, so we needed to hurry and leave. We finally managed to get out
of the city about 5:35pm.
5:57pm (2257 UTC)
Eventually, we ran into the precip core of a storm
south of Norman as it began to cross OK-9. Somehwere near Pink, near
the Cleveland-Pottawatomie Coutnies lines, we hit a farily heavy core
including some moderately heavy hail. The largest hail recorded was
about 1" (quarter-size), which we promptly radioed to NWS-OUN. This
lasted about 2-4 minutes. We dropped south on OK-102 to watch some
weak and unorganized rotation. A UMASS Doppler truck passed us about
this time. The rotation was not very impressive and contrast was bad,
so the video didn't turn out well. We continued south, turned east,
and headed through Macomb, OK, then headed back north on US-177. A new
storm started developing to the west near the OKC Metro. So, we
decided to head into Shawnee and wait for it. Since it was pretty slow
moving, we had the opportunity to eat and gas up the car.
7:22pm (0022 UTC)
8:20pm (0120 UTC)
 We began to lose light quickly. We stopped for
the final time about seven miles west of Okemah on I-40 to film the
storm, hopefully getting some cool shots with the lightning causing
some back-light effects. We weren't disappointed. Even though it was
night, we could still clearly see the low- and mid-level rotation. Just
for the heck of it, we drove on in to Tulsa and dropped off my video at
KOTV. We hung around for a bit waiting for some cells to clear I-44,
so we could have a rain-free drive home. We eventually left about
11:15pm, and got back home in Norman at 1:45am.
SUMMARY:
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I was a little disappointed about the lack of any tornadoes,
especially given the potential. However, since I expected the activity
to mostly be over, I was quite pleased with out results. Even though
our storm did not produce a tornado, it was still visually impressive.
Most of the storms that day had very little chance to produce tornadoes
as they quickly evolved into HPs. Parts of Oklahoma City were
inundated by some major hail.
It's still early in the season, and
it's been relatively quiet. I'm going to go out on a limb and predict
a very active late May and early June. So, I expect more chases to
come this season. Unless this turns out to be like 2002...notice the
extreme lack of chase logs from that year.
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