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Tour
#1: May 5-13 The
most profound aspect of this tour occurs on Sunday May 6th.
South of Norman OK, we position right between two exploding thunderheads.
One just to our NW becomes a supercell within ½ hour, and immediately
earns a severe storm warning. A pronounced rain free base inspires us to head
westward out Rt. 9 towards Bridgeport OK. We
find a hill to watch it blossom into a wall cloud producing storm. Soon tens of
other chasers join us, including a
TV news crew with a news van, helicopter and propeller plane. This storm develops a funnel beneath the wall, but
nothing more tornadic develops except for some hail and aqua blue sky tinged
into the black. It becomes a right mover and heads directly for our spot. As
this storm begins to lose strength, the storm just to our South takes over, and
develops a tremendous wall cloud that looks like a shovel turned on its side. In
addition it manifests swirling hail/rain curtains and a tornado warning.
After a 10 minute traffic blockade on Rt.9, we resume chase of
this storm, core punching 50 MPH winds, blinding rains and hail to nickel sized,
all the way to Noble OK. In
Noble, we finally clear the prec curtain and awe to a spectacular wall cloud
that hangs not far over treetops, dropping smoke-like pillars of gray funnels
that swirl and come within a few hundred feet of touchdown. With
a hill and trees in the way, it is hard to see if circulation is reaching the
earth, though this storm is reported as producing a brief tornado. We
chase this storm further to the SE, and experience hail nearly golf ball sized.
As hail increases in size, we pull back west out of the storm.
Within 20 minutes the hail is reported to be baseball sized just east of
where we were. From our new
position, we awe to a vivid double rainbow, and a tremendous shaft of sunlit
glittering raindrops extending all the way up into the clouds. During
this tour, we also chase high based intense storms in the OK Panhandle and KS,
including one storm tinged in ocean blue and having winds so strong as to raise
massive dust curtains, and another with absolutely profound lightning that we
thrill to for hours. We
also attend the final Tim Marshall hosted Annual Chasers Party. |
Send mail to thundereye@juno.com with
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