Our target area today was primarily western Oklahoma so we started off south, chasing the dryline storms. At our lunch break at Arby’s we saw an incredible storm build up with a nice overshooting top – but it was over at the cold front some 90 miles away. We continued into north Texas after lunch to watch a nice cell build up. It did not really turn into anything spectacular though.
Instead we continued south and started chasing a messy storm to our south. That storm complex later grew into a nice compact storm that soon got a tornado warning. It was a tedious chase trying to catch up on it from the north shooting down the semi-flooded roads. When we were just to the west of it we got reports over Twitter of a wedge tornado in it. The game of catch-up suddenly got really serious and the tension in the van was tangible.
When we finally got into position south of the storm the tornado was gone and it never produced any other. Our four hour speed chase was unsuccessful but we did enjoy the rain and incredible lightning that was coming over us when we finished the day with a dinner at Chili’s.
