Report & Pictures Chase Day 16

[Paul Sherman]

Started Wednesday 12th May in Enid (Ok) knowing that there would be 2 plays today and we should be able to get both! Our day did not start well as poor old Pat had it confirmed that the swelling on his leg was from a Recluse Spider Bite, this put us about 2 hours off the pace but this would be only the start of an "Interesting" Day that went from bizarre to ridiculous (Just one of those days I am afraid when everything went wrong)

After blasting West towards the Cold Front Line we then got behind the front and the temps went from 86f to 61f. Storms were way too cold so we headed back South towards Stillwater, back in the juicy air we looked at the top Storm West of Elk City, then went on the Southern Supercell that started to move to the Right and started to look like a Tornado Producer. Went South from Elk City and saw numerous Funnel Clouds, James thinks he has the Erick Tornado on one of his Pictures so we might have that one as well, some of the Structure shots we got in this location were very nice and I will let the others put those up, but by getting on the South Side of the Supercell I somewhere along the way must have hit something on the road, when we went back East to Intercept the Clinton Tornado my car started veering to the left and lights started flashing on the dash! We pulled off the road with a Tornado just in the rain in front of us (Easily Interceptible) and checked the tyres, back left was totally flat. This cost us an easy Tornado South of Clinton (Ok) what happened next shows how nice these people are out here. The Jack we had in the cars kit did not work so 2 Car loads of Oklahoman Storm Chasers pulled up and changed the Tyre on the car, this took about 30 Minutes so that was chase over, we still had time to Chase down the Rampaging Supercell North of Elk City and let it core us taking a few Hailstones and Straight Line Winds, ended the day in Woodward (Ok)

Not how it was supposed to pan out but we still saw Insane HP Supercell Structure and maybe still might have scored 1 Tornado. Also the Chase was High Octane down dirt roads, with great Cg Bolts and Night-Time Chasing thrown in.

I hope the guys enjoyed it as much as I did even if we had soo many problems along the way today

Paul S

**Pictures to Follow Tomorrow**

[MAF]

thanks for the update Paul

still a few watches for severe thunderstorms in your area, so you may get a few good lightning shows overnight

[multi cellular thunderstorm]

Very good day today, despite the setbacks Paul mentioned.

Here's a few photos...

Couple more HDR's...

And some normal if you don't like HDR...

[Arron]

Another great chase day, although extremely frustrating at the same time. I think I've got some great close lightning footage as we hurled down the eastern side of the storm, but will need to check that later and upload providing these stupid internet connections hold out. Heres a few pics anyway...

[sunny scunny]

Some great pics there guys

[pottyprof]

Magic our Morris!!

[AudMun]

Sorry to hear about your 'challenging' day. Hope your bites better Pat.

Still got some lovely pics there! Really puts into perspective all of the incredibly tame stuff over here!

Stewart

[Gorky]

First storm of the day for me south of Erick. Great persistent wall cloud with occasional needle funnels which didn't do much, despite the wall cloud being very close to the ground. Got a few CG's using my ND filter here which is always nice, but the filter was dusty so I've tried to remove some of the horrible black marks in post processing! <_<

That storm headed north and developed a massive scary black wall cloud with a fast developing inflow tail just south of Erick. I was chasing it up highway 30 and stopped to take some photos only to look behind me and see the next storm behind had very quickly spun up a full blown tornado which was just in the process of touching down.

Took a single still and switched to the camera, at which point, I took about 3 seconds of video before it dawned on me that the storm was heading right towards me!

Pics:

After escaping this, I spent a little while recovering myself. Shot some pics of the whale's mouth, and kinda forgot about the chase.

Chose not to chase the storm up to Clinton and got ahead of it at Weatherford instead. Missed the Clinton tornado which I hadn't expected based on radar imagery. The storm had lost some of it's punch at Weatherford, but was still spitting out CGs. Got to Geary and did lightning photography from about 15-20 miles south of the storm. I'd wanted to get a full storm photo but low cloud came in. Due to flat terrain I got some nice shots beneath the cloud deck at extreme range still More to come if I find the time to process them to remove the 2 dozen hot pixels my camera has developed! .

[user700]

HD Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7b5nbBh2JQ

[Cookie]

Great images their Gorky well done mate