STORM TRACK: July 31, 1983 (Volume 6 Issue 5)
On May 20, 1983, Tim Marshall and Roy Britt had an easy chase from their Lubbock, Texas base station to an early afternoon tornadic storm near Plainview, only an hour's drive away. They watched this storm cell develop for over an hour, before the first tornado appeared at 3:18 PM CDT. For the next 27 minutes and ten miles, they followed it, mainly as a concentrated dust swirl on the ground with occasional suction vortices but little indication of a cloud base condensation funnel. Eleven minutes later they drove under a rotating wall cloud and just missed being swept up by a 1/3 mile wide tornado that dropped down on the road behind them.
On May 24, Roy and Tim caught up to a severe storm near Silverton, Texas, with a banded base similar to the Garden City storm of May 30, 1978 (ST: Vol. 5, No. 2). A small funnel was photographed and 80 MPH winds were encountered. In fact, the blowing dust was so thick that the pavement disappeared, and Roy ran off the road,-- albeit at very low speed. It was then that Tim said, "Here! Let me drive. I can get us out of this!" Whereupon he opened the door and the car was instantly filled with blinding, storm driven Texas turf. When at last, they arrived in Lubbock, grit and dust coated cameras, lenses and everything else -- and each chaser looked more like a ghost than a person.
Keith Brewster recounts: "The world's largest 'bust' occurred in southwest Oklahoma, May 17, 1983. As you may have heard, this chase featured a caravan of 11 vehicles and 32 people, not counting two vehicles from Oklahoma University (TOTO crew , who were within radio range as this group watched a highly sheared (though very slowly rotating) CB develop on a dry-line near Willow, Oklahoma. Although some severe weather was encountered later by many of the group further north ..., I couldn't decide if the highlight of the chase was catching a glimpse of Bill of 'Bill's Safety Cab' in Chickasha, or seeing Don 'DbZ' Burgess standing on the hood of a car to get a measurement with the hand-held anemometer (of the 850 mb jet????), as passers-by from the metropolis of Duke, Oklahoma stared at the crowd! By the way, don't believe Don if he tells you the vehicle was hit by tennis-shoe size hail!"
Keith also adds an open inquiry "...I and others here at OU are interested in seeing something on hurricane chasing. What kind of strategy is employed, etc." (How about, it, hurricane chasers? How do you plan differently for hurricanes, as compared to tornadoes? What different risks do you encounter (flooding, blocked roads, etc.)? What's the best, vehicle to use? -Editor)
