The highlight of my week came last night. The weather forecasters called for severe weather for eastern Oklahoma yesterday afternoon and evening (east of I-35), so I knew we would miss the severe weather in OKC, but there would be a lot of it east of us. Since I really did not have anything planned last night, I decided at around 11 am that I wanted to go storm chasing with one of my REACT team, members. He does this on the side as a hobby and he is a professional at it. Since we weren’t going to have to storm spot for our REACT team, I figured I would go with him and see some action.
I left the office at 14:30 and met up with the guys. We headed east on I-40 at 15:00 pm and made our way to eastern Oklahoma. Our target were some storms that were developing south of Ardmore and Ada. The chasers I was with, had a laptop with live radar images and a GPS system to show where they were and where the storms were. There were many storms developing along the dry line, but it seemed as if the south storms were more potent, so we chose to follow them. During the time we chased storms, I witnessed two tornado touchdowns, several funnels that never made it to the ground, several rotating wall clouds and many rotating clouds. Most of the storms we followed were rotating, which meant they could put a tornado down anytime. We stopped at several vantage points, watched the tornadoes develop and took some pictures.
I sat in the back seat of the truck, so I did not see as much. The chasers I was with saw a few more tornadoes than I did because the tornadoes were to the left of us and they had a better view than I did. As it started getting darker, I knew that I would not be able to take any more pictures. The pictures I did take were not very good. At one time, while we were driving to the storm, we got pounded with quarter-sized hail. I don’t believe it damaged the truck any, but it was loud. When it got dark, we had to rely solely on the radar, the weather radio and the GPS. The only way to chase at night is to look for tornadoes when you see lightning strikes. Since severe thunderstorms can drop tornadoes at any time, you really have to be on the look-out. Fortunately, we had another vehicle with chasers in it that we were following. At one point, we kept losing radar connection, so we had to rely on the other team to steer us in the right direction. We kept in contact with them via ham radio.
As it got a little later, the storms we were chasing were starting to lose their intensity and the tornado threat was very low. At around 21:30, we stopped at a McDonalds in Atoka and had a small bite to eat. At that time, we decided that it was time to call it a night, so we all headed back to the city. I arrived home at 00:30 this morning. I didn’t get much sleep and I feel like a zombie.
Today is tax day, however, I was told it was an official holiday for Washington D.C., so our taxes aren’t actually due until Monday. It doesn’t matter to me…..for the first time in 30 years, we owe both state and federal. I am not in any hurry to pay. This weekend I have two lawns to mow and some things to get done around the house.
http://www.neighborhoodlink.com/OCFD_Citizens_Fire_Academy_Alumni_Association
http://www.okcentralreact.org/
No comments:
Post a Comment