10/17/07 REPORTS: KS / MO / OK

[Scott Roberts]

Started out from ICT in a driving rain about 1pm, headed south. I was hedging the bets a bit at that point, thinking about PNC area or staying up toward ICT. Obviously out way too late to catch the leading-edge stuff 2 hours east of me.

When the MD came out for western/central KS about 1:30 or so, we took off west on US-160 through Wellington, target area Medicine Lodge. I thought the outflow off the earlier activity might interact with the dryline at about that point, or a bit south of there.

After a fairly long stop in Medicine Lodge, we decided to go north on 281 to get out of the river valley and watch what appeared to be a hail-producer southwest of town. Ended up sitting another 20 minutes or so 5 miles N of town, and sat there until a TVS showed up in the VNC radar at right about the point we'd been watching rotate for 5-10 minutes. It never really breathed out any funnels at this point, but it appeared the rotating area would go right overhead, so we pulled east.

Arrived at Isabel Road (a couple of miles east) just in time to catch the storm as it evolved into a pretty healthy rotation that lasted about 20 minutes. It spit out several funnels as we watched; I took a call from ICT NWS during that time asking what I was seeing, as they showed me pretty much at the dryline/outflow intersection, and weren't getting much info from DDC at the time.

Looking back at the video, it appears there was an area of horizontal rotation on the leading edge of the storm that briefly got stood up. It formed a really-nice looking classic funnel that lasted about 45 seconds or so, but never reached the ground.

Just did the vidcap, and I count 4 funnels in the shot....

[Rocky Rascovich]

Another semi successful day.. I traveled with Charles Edwards and basically stuck within the confines of Canadian County, OK. for the best part of today. After the gungefest from thismorning cleared out, cells fired along the dry line to our west and we set up just north of El Reno. Watched a storm develop a nice rain free base with an attendant lowering that at one point developed a nice dry slot with the wall cloud by around 1530cdt. Rotation at times was moderate with rising scud tags close to the base. As this moved closer to us, the cell took on more of a linear shape and the wall cloud became more diffuse.

We elected to head east to intercept the next cell that was moving up thru the OKC area. As we came close to Piedmont Rd. to go north then east, our original storm briefly intensified and quickly produced a funnel which we saw clearly very close to my farm NW of Piedmont. It descended at 300-500 feet or so from the base. By the time we pulled over to videotape, the funnel dissapated. A few minutes later at around 1600, a wall cloud developed with scud tags developing and rising at a very rapid rate, I was sure this was going to produce, also of note, winds increased substantially a few miles south and west of Piedmont. At one point, inflow winds were sustained at around 30kts with gusts easily to 40. As we got up to Waterloo Rd. which is 3 mi. north of my farm, the wall cloud again diminished and inflow winds became a non issue. My wife Dee got some nice pics of this wall cloud as it developed rapidly but she was not aware of the funnel cloud that I'm sure was very visible (and probably quite close) to the farm. That storm never regained the strength that it had earlier, so we focused on the storm that had come up thru Edmond and east OKC. We finally intercepted it a little east of Luther on Hwy 33 around 1640, winds to 35kts and hail up to nickel size was the predominate feature with this.

Overall, I believe the chief failure modes for more tornadoes today was the dry punch at the 700-850mb. level which ate away the updrafts during the afternoon storms... also, perhaps a little bit of subsidence from the morning convection contributed to todays results as well. I'm sure a much more indepth discussion concerning today will follow. All in all, I was pleased to be out and as has been the case a few other times this year, another close one for the farm today.

Rocky&family

[Angie Norris]

I made a quick run up I-35 on the OKC storm as it headed northeast toward the Logan County area. The OKC storm put out a fairly decent shelf cloud as it exited the east side of the city. Further up I-35, I ran into some moderate rain and gusty winds that were pushing tumbleweeds parts ahead of the storm. Turned east onto Seward Road where I was treated to an exquisite double rainbow and a developing tower that I think went on to the Coyle area.
For those who have heard the hail roar before, I have a question...would you describe it as a "grumbly waterfall"? I heard that sound as I was watching the storm move on to the northeast.
I agree with Rocky...I think that dry punch, plus lack of insolation helped keep storms from being as intense as forecasted...it was just too cloudy for too long today.
Big thanks to Bob Schafer for nowcasting today :)
Hey Rocky, if you move, I want your place...talk about a storm magnet!

[Brian Emfinger]

I held closer to home in the party cloudy skies south of Tulsa. I nearly took off after some storms developed just a few miles to the north of me and of course that turned into the long lived supercell that tracked through NE OK, NW ARK and into SW Missouri. Of course even if I had tried it wouldnt have worked out due to the fast pace and bad roads. Well after that another storm came out of Texas and I waited too long to head that way. Finally I gave up on more storms firing in Eastern Oklahoma and I jetted south to the storm which of course began to lose strength. I got to it when it was still Tornado Warned in Western Ark but it didnt have much lightning and soon it completely died. Another severe storm developed just north of it and I got some lightning.

http://www.realclearwx.com/1017071.jpg
http://www.realclearwx.com/1017072.jpg

http://www.realclearwx.com/1017073.jpg

I am definitely not disappointed though since this morning I had become pretty pessimistic about this setup.

[AndrewLee]

I got a late start and left downtown Kansas City at 3pm. The clearing and backing winds in SW Missouri gave me hope that I might be able to catch a discrete storm as it raced out of OK. Stopped in Butler and saw that there was a beast of a cell that crossed the AR/MO border SE of Joplin. Long story short...I intercepted the storm at mile marker 46 on I-44 near Mt. Vernon. I only got one picture of the tornado (below). It's not a great photo as I snapped it while i was driving. I bumped the contrast ratio on it to make the tornado more visible. I would have more pics and video, but the engine in my car blew out. The car stopped at the bottom of a hill with trees obscuring my view to the NE so I couldn't even watch the storm.

[insert long list of expletives of your choice]...Ya know my whole 2007 season has been about me picking good target areas but getting there just after the parties over. Today, I was in the right place and in perfect position to observe this storm as it tore through SW MO. All I can say is that God has a sense of humor. I am tired and cranky and still have to get back to KC.

I will say that this storm had some very nice structure and I'd be happy to see it in May let alone October.

http://kinyamkela.netglimpse.com/pics/mtVernon20071017-tornado.jpg

Andrew Lee

[Jeremiah Rosson]

This is my first Storm track post......

However, it was a great day to go and hang with some friends we were able to see some interesting stuff.... all which we have seen before but all in all it was nice to punch a core in October and pick up a few new hail dents.....

[David Schuttler]

This is about the best I came up with in the Northern areas of Tulsa.
Settings are somewhere between 10mm and 20mm
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2319/1610086981_993f5681bc.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2296/1610973100_b2f7421e9c.jpg

And then the junk that came in earlier in the afternoon(taken at work)
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2016/1610084349_1b3c3ddf9f.jpg

[mike scantlin]

I stayed in Stillwater last night due to empty pockets and empty tank. I woke up late, and headed out the door to look at the line coming in. Very ominous on the underside of the leading edge.


Ominous underbelly of the leading edge. (http://i20.tinypic.com/femdmx.jpg)


Me posing with 'ole Blue (http://i20.tinypic.com/3009lih.jpg)


My buddies Matt Hagy and Randy Rhea picked me up, and we opted to go south towards Shawnee, hoping to chase one all the way to Tulsa, see some friends, then come back to Edmond. Curveball.

We were in Shawnee hunting for wifi when Daniel Neal called with a radar update. said to hed west immediately as a discrete cell was starting to show up. we couldnt see it thanks to the lingering clouds. so we hopped on 40W. as we passed just south of OKC, we saw this


Yay! A REAL SUPERCELL! NO LINEAR CRAP. (http://i24.tinypic.com/jim8wp.jpg)
We drove to the East side of the river to get a clear view. when the best part of our chase took place.

A red car pulled up, and a "weird" looking lady jumped out angrily. my first thought was "prostitute" but who knows. the guy drives off. turns around, comes back and says "do you want a ride or not?" She replies "F*** NO!" His response was along the lines of "F*** YOU B****!"

She wanders about baffled by the drugs in her body...

http://i24.tinypic.com/29wx0yw.jpg
We chuckle, as we are about 20 feet from the whole ordeal, holding cameras and video cameras, and i knew she would say something. We decide to get moving as the storm is quickly picking up speed. Here is the conversation that took place.

Lady(under the influence slurring):w w w why were ya takin picatures uhv meh?
Me:ummm, you see that storm? its could drop a tornado at any time.
Lady(obviuosly not understanding): WHY WERE YA LOOKIN AT MEH!?
Me: please go to rehab.


I'm a *****. I know. Do what you want behind closed doors, as long as it doesn't affect anyone else, but seeing people like that in public bothers me.

Onward. We try to keep up, and barely succeed. We got some nice pictures from one vantage. The we hit a dead end and kissed the storm bye bye. So we went home.

More pics.


Metro chasing sucks (http://i23.tinypic.com/2me8ugx.jpg)


Updraft base. lots of movement, but nothing too persistent. (http://i21.tinypic.com/vrewl2.jpg)


As close was we got to organized Wall cloud (http://i23.tinypic.com/2v3of41.jpg)



The end.

[Mikey Gribble]

That was another kick in the nuts. We were on the tail end storm in Oklahoma. The one that developed just SW of OKC and tracked through just North of town. Anyways, we followed it all the way up to Tulsa. It looked like it was struggling with outflow the entire time. It had the long skinny gust front kind of updraft to it, which I always hate to see. It just never got going. I haven't looked back on data yet to try to figure out what went wrong. That definitely sucked though. I really can't feel bad about where we were. If I were virtual chasing, that is the storm that I would have picked. I would have bet it was going to be the storm of the day for sure. It looks like that storm by Springfield Missouri was instead though. After getting kicked in the junk for six years, I'm used to it.

edit - a longer and more boring report can be found here http://loadedgunchasing.com/blog.html

[Tim Marshall]

SHORT: Race chased a non-tornadic, low-topped supercell that formed near Chickasha, went through the northwest OKC metro, and let it go north of Cushing.

LONG: Carson and I headed north to our target town of Ardmore. A squall line developed apparently on the moist axis and we let that go awaiting redevelopment on the dryline farther west. After a leisure lunch at Two Frogs, we sat in an open field for a couple of hours before seeing the tail-end storm form near Chickasha. It was off to the races and we fortunately had I-35 to take northward meeting the storm in Oklahoma City. The storm had a flat, linear base and low top. The updraft was quite tilted, as typical with such high speed shear events. The anvil was serrated on its south side and there was no backshear. A band of cumulus clouds extended southeast from the storm base. Some towers farther south actually had their tops ripped apart. We followed the storm northeast of the city, zigged northeast on the turnpike, then zagged north on Rt. 177. The storm cycled twice with clear slots and wall clouds, but the base could never tighten. We gave up on the storm north of Cushing then headed back to Dallas stopping in Norman for a nice dinner. As expected, the storms had too much speed shear and not enough instability or directional shear for tornadoes. TM

[fplowman]

Fred drives all the way from Kansas City to near Oklahoma City. Observes storms firing. Storms never get going. Fred drives all the way back to KC. :rolleyes:

[afischer]

My chase mirrors Tim Marshall's pretty closely. Chased the tail-end charlie storm from south of Mustang to Cushing and then let it go. I was too busy driving to get good looks at it for a steady period of time (it was rather tough to keep up with). It started to look fairly impressive just north of Edmond as scud began rising into a lowering base, but went linear and cold-looking thereafter. I'll have to look at this disappointing event more closely in the future, as I chased after a mid shift and then crashed for 12 hours. The 19Z OUN sounding looks like it was launched before temps mixed into the mid 70s, and it still had a ML LI of -8! Impressive considering instability was something most folks were worried about (I didn't expect quite so much clearing). Definitely surprised that discrete cells couldn't do a little more in this environment, unless the veering backing pattern was a problem.

[Shane Adams]

Chad, Mick, and I managed to get on OK33 east of Watonga and kept moving east through Cimmaron City and eventually to Guthrie, keeping three storms in sight as the weak string of pearls storms tried to become bonafied sups. The middle storm (the one that moved through El Reno) managed a nice wall cloud for several minutes, with good rising motions and some interesting differential/turbulent motion. But it gradually became stretched into outflow mess, so we booked it east through Guthrie onto OK105 and went about 30 miles further east before giving up, as everything we could catch was crap. All in all, despite the blah storms, we were satisfied with our chase because we stuck to our plans and made good strategical decisons throughout the day. We seem to do pretty well when we stick to our guns.

[Jeff Snyder]

Similar story to most folks who chased in Oklahoma... I left OUN with Mike French, Jana Houser, and Howie B. upon seeing initiation down near Chickasha. We got in good view of that storm as we passed through Moore (driving nearly alongside Roger E and company), and we ended up chasing it to Cushing. It was apparent to us that things were not going to go well upon feeling cold, westerly outflow after stopping between Tryon and Perkins miles southeast of the primary updraft base. We meandered southward towards sunset to see if anything coming up from just east of OKC would do anything. The storm(s) appeared to have weak rotation on radar as they passed S and E of Stroud, but it was then getting dark, so we called it off.

As a little note, my wife called me from our house in northwestern Arcadia as we were driving N of Wellston on 177 to tell me that quarter size hail had fallen 10-15 minutes earlier. She took a few pictures of some of the hailstones -- some were very spikey, and many were quite irregularly-shaped, something I don't remember seeing a lot with hail only the size of quarters. I supsect that some of those oddly-shaped stones were likely larger at one time, but had melted (either falling through the storm or on the ground in rainwater).

[Brian Stertz]

The chase yesterday was pretty much a zero as Rich & Ryan Thies and I tried to make lemonade without any lemons. The supercell structures were not as epic as I would have believed they would be...and dealt with some seriously outflow dominant sub-supercells. We caught the storm as it moved into Payne Co. Got into some lower end severe hail and watched the storm head off into the nether-regions of Osage Co.

Saw an interesting gust front bowl near Claremore and it had THE look for a few mins. before the outflow blast sealed the circulation's fate.

Bust yes...but at least we saw some storms, and low-end supercells. This appears to be my last chase of 2007. The time window for chasing gets pretty grim the rest of the way, and don't want to deal with those fast movers anymore....at least not until March or April !! Here's a toast for 2008...

Know the feeling Fred...well stated. Got to see the aftermath of the Coffeyville KS flood disaster. That poor town may never be the same. Very chilling sight even months afterwards.

[Joey Ketcham]

Not really much to add than what's already been said. Tyler Costantini, Dustin Klinghagen and I were in Guthrie Oklahoma when storms began firing up to our southwest, we intercepted the storms around the Meridian, Stillwater, and Perkins area. I'll post some pics later.

[Mike Hollingshead]

Chasing. Sigh. Left at 7 a.m., got home a little after 2 a.m.....and really never stopped driving. 1104 miles and 19 hours behind the wheel, and for what? Lets see. Stressed on the KS turnpike trying not to hydroplane like the other cars I'd see that obviously did. That went on for a couple hours, my crap tires are really becoming a pain. Get into OK near Nash as things fired, only to be driving into nodataville NW OK. I slowly drove to west of Enid where I got my cell to connect around 11k. Fun getting a nws loop on that....especially when it disconnects at 90% and thinks it needs to start all over again once reconnected. Dropped se to Perry ahead of those two tail end storms, the second from the bottom looked better, but I had to keep going east incase the southern one got going. So, the view was right into my back passenger side blindspot the whole time. Not just that, but damn there's no buffer zone once you cross I35. I exit Perry and thought I'd driven into NW MO. I try a couple gravel roads, only to see most have small hills on either side with tall grass. Just no view.

Kept going east to get a better view of the southern one. It looked cold and linear. I stopped, wishing I'd never left home. I also had no sleep(3 hours) the night before thanks to too many brownies and sprite...felt like crap. I just about stayed home. Shucks. I was now wishing I'd went north on I35 for home and not driven this far east. So to drive home, or stay ahead of things and get a room later. I opt to drive back to I35 and drive home, punching the storm on the way. Well I get into it and it's pretty severe, which really surprised me. I say fine, I'll go ahead of it and just get a room later. Getting back out of that was no easy task. I was amazed how much the wind was switching directions. There was a good deal of leaf debris constantly in the air. Then the winds would start racing out of the south again. I really thought I'd either drive off the road, or a tree would land on me. Hail was also in this mix.

I get out of it and watch it head ne. I head towards Tulsa as those new cells fired east of OKC. They sucker me south at Sand Springs where I thought at the least I could do some lightning photography. Not knowing the area, I didn't know where would be good or bad. I get to Sapulpa and become increasing annoyed at my data constantly disconnecting, dumb dumb drivers(god so many slow pokes out there yesterday), and the stupid terrain. I snapped somewhere south of Sapulpa and said screw it all, I'm driving home now. I mean sometimes it seems like these idiots get stacked up just for you(right after I snapped and turned back north I get behind some guy doing 50 in a 65).

So back into traffic and into Tulsa to head north. I take 75 north, but find it closed up there, which then directs me back to the stupid interstate I came from. I take it southeast then east then up 169. I get up there aways, blowing off the Tulsa storm as I just didn't care by this point. I get to Nowata and these tards on the radio are reporting some tornado situation to the west of there, talking about people should put on their sturdy shoes(heard that more than once). Data wasn't working again and I didn't know what I was about to drive into. I could start to see the structure and it looked like garbage, which I'd assumed it was the whole time heading north. But, the funnel reports continue, some on the ground, lol. I drove into that mess to finish this long drive home.

Nothing is more annoying than rain at night, blacktop roads with old faded paint, and having crappy tires too. I didn't care though, I wasn't wasting more money on this day by getting a room. I found a couple semis to follow. They work wonders for removing the water from the road, especially if it is windy. All is well till about Ottawa KS. Somewhere around there my contacts both act dirty as hell. I was even getting a flare off headlights, but only out of my left eye, lol. That was highly annoying for as long as it did that. I didn't want to try and fix them by taking them out as I just didn't want to lose one in the process. I thought they'd soon water up and get better like normally happens. Wrong. They'd be ok till I turned the heat on. So I drove home pretty cool, windows open. Then, if I had any bright lights around, that would make them screw up again. That was strange. I guess the pupil changing that little bit would screw them up again(maybe that's not possible). I tried to look at my laptop a couple times, but bam, they were screwed up again. So just left it closed. Had to get gas, bam they were screwed up. Then, just keeping warm they were messed up the majority of the drive from KC to north of Omaha. Then add in being amazingly tired that last two hours, along with that. It achieves a new level for me, worst drive home. A couple points during the last hour I'd half felt like I'd been dreaming. I wasn't out of control of the car or anything, never crossed any lines, but it just felt surreal.

I guess a person can only stare at the highway for so long, especially after no sleep, 19 hours of straight driving, almost constant annoyances all day long(rain, people, data, crap storms, etc....contacts!). And for what??? Just to get back to where you started. Getting those contacts out(burned!) and sitting down on the couch for a bit, simply...felt...wonderful. Maybe that's why I left home. My couch has never felt so nice before. Yeah that's why I left home, to make my couch feel like heaven later. There were no idiots there(yeah yeah yeah, I know that is arguable, especially after all this), no rain, no need for data, no need for dirty contacts, one can close their eyes on it, one can lay down, .......I'm going back there.

(On a side note, just remembered....I did not see one single chaser the entire trip until I drove into the storm to head home...before changing that plan. I never dreamed that it would be possible to go that long in OK and not see any. Even after I turned around and got back ahead of things I never saw any others. Crazy)

[Dustin Wilcox]

What an appropriate ending to the chase season, much like everyone else we were suckered into heading down into the forbidden state of OK. From day one looking at this event I had a serious fear of getting burned by storms up near the low across NC KS, and about the time I was beginning to face the fact that our storm was junk, I took a look at radar up North and sure enough right on the sfc low there was a torn waring along the NE/KS boarder, I was pretty psyched, thankfully no reports up there. We left early in the morning after debating rather to take I-29 and play in SE KS and SW MO and NE OK or take I-35 and setup in C OK having been through the hills of MO before our decision came quickly and we began the trek south stopping in Perry OK, were we chilled out for a little while cheering on the clearing that was ever so slowly pushing east, but fearing the veering winds in place. Eventually satellite made it appear that initiation was about to occur on the dryline so we moved east toward Hennessey and the hwy 81 corridor, from there we watched and waited for convection to get its act together, eventually it became apparent to us that we wanted to be on the southern storm as the three decent storms at that point were relatively close to each other we figured the southern one would eventually cut the others off. Not wanting to deal with the OKC metro and realizing the storm had a ways to go, we dropped down to Kingfisher and moved West on hwy 33. About the time we reached Guthrie little did I know I was witnessing the best structure I would all day, the storm just to our west at that point actually had a decent structured wall cloud, that really looked like it meant business, given the distance I couldn't tell if it was rotating, and we still figured it would soon suffer as the updraft over the OKC metro was all but a few miles from raining on it. Upon intercepting the OKC storm just NE of the metro, it was quite apparent it was all but done as a big outflow arching all the way back to the SW pushed east, by the looks of radar I initially thought maybe the storm was going to complete a left split but the outflow was just to much for the storm to overcome. We kind of trailed the storm screwing around on the hilly back roads of OK more than anything, until eventually we decided it was time for the drive of shame and we began the drive home. One benefit of the storm never really getting its act together was we were able to avoid what surely would have been a massive chaser convergence, in fact I think we only passed a couple chasers the whole day and that was coming East on 33 out of Kingfisher. I'm actually kind of impressed by the performance of the models, they nailed everything about yesterday, and I still got suckered by my addiction. Bring on Spring!!!

[Dick McGowan]

Darin Brunin and I left late, and tried to get as far south as we could, trying not to hydroplane on the turnpike also. We turned west out of Wellington and headed towards Medicine Lodge, when I got my first speeding ticket in 2 years in the great city and county of Harper, KS. He was very nice and respectful and I deserved it, so no grudge held there. We saw a nice storm near Medicine Lodge, that was killed by a more linear storm, so we raced east to get ahead of the now merging storms. We almost beat it, but had to take a road south to Caldwell, KS, and it overtook us. Not too bad for winds, but the rain was blinding. We finally made it out of the line and saw the infamous "whale's mouth" near Arkansas City, which was pretty cool structure wise. We kept going east, hoping those cells in NC OK, would eventually make it our way, and they did just north of Coffeyville. VERY interesting structure there, as it looked like those waves recently in IA. We were trying to pull over and take pictures, and got blasted. I don't know how we didn't see it, but I guess it was nearly dark, and it took us by surprise. We completely stopped on the highway, as everyone else now was, and watched the trees bend. I love how those gusts come in little bursts, and kind of affect your hearing. Copius amounts of hail were now hitting our car with these strong gusts, and nearly covered the ground. About 4 minutes later it was over, and we made our way to Coffeyville, where we got a quick bite to eat and checked data. I don't know what happened in about 15 minutes, but wind and rain just picked up after we thought the storm blew over us, and we contemplated whether or not to go east out of Coffeyville or not. Wind was switching direction on us every 10 seconds, and Alltel's retarded data was not working properly since Arkansas City (Not that we've ever relied on data). When our radar updated, a tornado warning was issued to our south, and it seemed like a new notch was forming in Coffeyville. To make a long story short, I panicked and said screw it all and drove north to get away. Ever since May 4th and 5th, I'm done, done, done night chasing, it has installed a new fear into me that I'm sure will never leave. Visibility was garbage, so we drove north, and eventually got back home.

Mike, we were listening to that same station, I think it was 104.7 and I kept thinking what in the heck is a sturdy shoe! I thought he said something else, and whatever it was made me laugh. He kept saying they had a damage assessment crew out there where the funnel touched the ground. Those guys were pissing me off, and they kept saying the rotation was in an area where it was not, or at least I didn't think it was.

Crappy chase, and now I am sure that I am gunshy of night chasing, which probably is a good thing. I'll post pics up later today.

Edit: Did anyone see those cloud bases near Sedan, KS?? We were on a hill, looking down, and I'm gonna guess they were about 50 feet off the ground, and we were above them! They were getting pulled almost straight east into that bow to our west. I have a few pics I'll post up, strangest thing I've ever seen.
Alltel data on Highway 166 east of Arkansas City is no good till Coffeyville, and slow at best near there. I think we saw towers every 2 miles, and it would give you that error "Can not connect to remote computer." Or it would connect, and wouldn't pull any data at all. I think this happened MOST of the day, all over the place. I called them and evidently Sprint is having trouble with their towers (which Alltel shares with).

[Michael O'Keeffe]

Captured multiple weak, but photogenic supercells from west of Okeene, OK to Stillwater, OK along highway 51. Here are two video stills of some of the cells we saw.

The first here is a picture of the first supercell we saw west of Okeene that had pretty good structure and moderate rotation.
http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k3/wolverines028/oct1701.jpg


The second is of a definate funnel looking north out of Stillwater, OK. The funnel was fairly brief and rotating for sure.
http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k3/wolverines028/oct1702.jpg

All in all a HUGE disappointment in terms of what we expected, but I'd have to say it wasn't half bad.

Will have a chase log up ASAP with more stills and photos.

[Zac Goode]

Left for okc to el reno at 12pm(yeah I know,what a drive:p) Waited for the southen stuff firing off the dryline to get there.Watched a elevated storm with a a little structure cross I-40. Decided to try to intercept the west okc storm(looked a little better at the time).Ran down nw expressway into okc and found some hail and a nice little hail shaft. Decided to call it off there. Storms were movin on and didn't look too great...Oh well, It was fun getting out and dusting off some equipment.

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

Atleast I didnt have too drive to far yesterday. We initially went out by El Reno and picked up the 2 decent cells coming up SW of OKC. We were on the western one till the one to the SE looked better. We jumped on the turnpike and got stuck in bad traffic because people were parking under the overpasses, the worst I have ever seen in my life. People were parked all the way up the embankment under the overpass. I am surprised there was not a wreck. We tried to stay with this storm till about Chandler, OK till we stopped and got gas and waited for the cells firing over Norman to do something, which they never did. One cell did fired just South of Chandler though that was looking decent, so we went down to atleast core punch it. Coming up behind the storm near Sparks, OK, the storm had good rotation. As we were moving east out of town, the real fun began. All 4 cars in our group were pulled over and all received the same ticket. Just they way I love to end every chase. What happened with the cops will take longer to write than this chase report. The last picture was taken after we got pulled over. Half the photos I took this day were while we were pulled over.

Some pics from the day.
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q122/not_a_leader_of_men/DSC_0013_1.jpg
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q122/not_a_leader_of_men/DSC_0030_1.jpg
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q122/not_a_leader_of_men/DSC_0037_1.jpg

[Joey Ketcham]

Miles: 580

Our chase was pretty much like everyone else’s who was chasing down in Oklahoma today. Tyler Costantini and I left Pittsburg, KS around 7 AM and made a quick stop at Chris Wilburn’s house to discuss the setup for the day. Tyler and I went on to Tulsa where we picked up Dustin Klinghagen. We ended up in Guthrie Oklahoma when we noticed cells starting to develop to our southwest around Chickasaw. We decided rather than dropping south that we would instead go northeast and wait for the storms to come to us hoping that by then they'd mature some and be tornadic (which never happened), so we ended up going over on Highway 105 and positioned ourselves just north of Meridian and watched the storms as they approached us.

We tried staying with the storms as best we could, but didn’t have much luck. We got into Tulsa later on right as severe storms rolled into the area and we basically stayed with those severe storms all the way back up into NE Oklahoma. We passed through Baxter Springs, KS on the way back.. they had no power and had some damage due to 80-85MPH straight line winds. The good thing about this chase was that we were close to home so we got back home a little after 10:00. Here are some pics from the day.

http://www.kschaser.com/st/st1.jpg
Taken just north of Meridian looking southwest at the approaching storms.

http://www.sekchaser.com/st/st2.jpg
On Highway 105 northeast of Meridian looking southwest.

http://www.kschaser.com/st/st3.jpg
Dustin noticed this behind us as we were heading east on Highway 105. This was just a low scud cloud beyond the hill, looked cool though.

http://www.kschaser.com/st/st4.jpg
This is my first ever lightning photograph. This was somewhere between OKC and Tulsa.

[Earl Faubion]

After much debate Wayne Hlinicky and I decided to give it a shot, leaving OKC a few minutes before 2:00 PM and heading west on I-40 towards the activity starting to pop in western OK. Later we switched targets to the same two southern storms others have written about and exited at Hinton and headed south toward Binger. At Binger we realized the southern storm was "tail end Charlie" and focused on trying to intercept it by going east on Hwy 152, our intent being to go south on 81 and then east on 37. It quickly became apparent the storm was moving far too fast for that to work so we opted to stay on 152, jogging north to Union City on 81, then east again on 152 toward Mustang.

A few miles east of Union City we began bumping into the hail core on the northwest side of the storm. It treated us to a brilliant double rainbow for a while. In the larger version of the photo some of the falling hail is visible.

http://www.ineedgoodcredit.com/temp/101707st1sm.jpg (http://www.ineedgoodcredit.com/temp/101707st1.jpg)

At Richland Road 8 miles east of Union City we got off the highway to better observe the now fast receding storm. The ground was littered with marble and dime size hail with a few nickels mixed in. There was no observable rotation in this storm however the hail shaft remained visible on its left side for quite some time.

By now it was 4:00 PM and having no desire to chase in OKC during rush hour we called it a day. Since this storm tracked over some heavily populated areas we were glad it did not produce a tornado.

[Robert Rohloff]

I started out north of Owasso as the first line of storms hit the Tulsa area. Did get some video for station of a house fire caused from CG. Was cut off heading south by damage from first storms along Hwy 75 in North Tulsa. Finally thought the storm coming into the Sapulpa area would produce around 7 PM. There was some slight rotation but it never was able to organize.

I followed this cell east into Tulsa. It passed over my station KTUL 8 on Lookout MT. They reported a significant pressure drop followed by a recorded 55mph gust.

This storm then struck the Riverwest Festival grounds where the VIP night for Octoberfest was in progress. There were about 7000 persons there since it was VIP only. Around 50 persons were injured when two of the large tent blew down. Several of the injuries were critical or serious and 25 persons had to go via ambulance.

This storm generated a gust of 85 east of that location at TIA. We had one commercial structure that the south facing garage door blew in and the wind knocked down the entire west brick front of the building.

I talked to Bob Hall last light out at the festival. He had the radar down load from the time of the storm hitting tulsa and it showed a good gust front just infront of the cell. GR An2 showed it quite well.

[Sam Sagnella]

Storm chase describes quite accurately what went down Wednesday here in central Oklahoma. Tommy Winning and I were on the Grady County cell that tracked across OKC and into areas N and E of there. We initally headed west out of OUN on HWY 37 towards the Tuttle/Minco areas, along the way seeing convection firing to our W and SW. When we got to Minco we turned south onto US-81 and drove several miles while seeing both cells becoming better organized. We decided to turn west on Dutton Rd (Pocasset) and skirt along the very north edge of the southern cell's (OKC storm) precip core, so that we could maintain a view of both its base, and the cell now to our NW (later Kingfisher/Logan cell).

The following series of pictures shows the base of the Minco/OKC storm as seen from the west. I was initially bothered by the powerlines, but, noting that all of these were literally taken within a two-minute window, their changing angle actually serves as a testament to the speed at which these things were moving. (check out the hail core).
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/4508/20071017gradyco002bf4.jpg

http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/8997/20071017gradyco003kc6.jpg

http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/7129/20071017gradyco004kz6.jpg

http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/8745/20071017gradyco005po9.jpg
Yeesh; screaming NE.

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/1854/20071017gradyco007kc3.jpg
After the inital pass that the storm made in Grady Co., we had a futile game of catch-up ahead of us, which ended at Kilpatrick and US-77 . A nice day overall, but this was our first encounter with having to keep up with such fast moving storms, and honestly, it will probably take a pretty extreme setup to get us to attempt this again :-) .

[Dick McGowan]

Some pictures from yesterday, this first one, was looking down at the cloud base. It was rocketing to the west/northwest and was quickly gone. My number #1 priority from now on, is to make sure the ISO isn't jacked way the heck up.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y230/DickTwister/sedancbaseweb.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y230/DickTwister/arkcity3web.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y230/DickTwister/arkcity2web.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y230/DickTwister/arkcity1web.jpg

[Michael O'Keeffe]

Here is a 2 minute video clip of the chase from Wednesday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-wS9pCXV70

[Dean L. Cosgrove]

I considered leaving the day before for a SE KS - NE OK target . There were too many negatives for me to make the trip especially with other target options.

I had planned to target the DL around P28 however I could not shake the "feeling " about playing the low around HLC . I was in the HLC area shortly after noon and decided to go with my instinct and stay with the low. I already had good heating and adequate dews. A big positive for this play would be much slower storm motion.

First pic is tower that would later be the tornado warned storm

http://www.windsweptchasetours.com/Oct17_1.jpg

Tornado warned storm near Phillipsburg, KS

http://www.windsweptchasetours.com/Oct17_2.jpg

http://www.windsweptchasetours.com/Oct17_3.jpg

Tornado sirens are on as tornado warned storm is just NW of Agra, KS

http://www.windsweptchasetours.com/Oct17_4.jpg

Dean Cosgrove
http://chasetours.com/

[Simon Brewer]

Didn't really expect tornadoes this day (0-1 shear was horrible), but I did expect some low-topped supercells (0-3 shear was good), which are almost as good as tornadoes, so I just had to go out. Watched storm that passed near El Reno and King Fisher, then watched elevated OKC storm east of Guthrie, then watched brief supercell south of Stroud.
http://www.stormgasm.com/10-17-07/IMG_2776%20copy.JPG
http://www.stormgasm.com/10-17-07/IMG_2798%20copy.JPG
link to chase page below:
http://www.stormgasm.com/10-17-07/10-17-07.htm