4/15/2006 08:36:00 PM|W|P|Bob Hall|W|P|The streak ended. Justin Teague, Matt Patterson and I intercepted a large tornadic storm today in HD and with a vx2100. The video aired on several major networks (CNN, Weather Channel, and ABC Good Morning America as well as several local affiliates. It was a great chase with some of the best guys in the business. I am very lucky in that I get to chase with experienced people. It really helps when you can split the costs as well. A full chase account was written by Matt Patterson. I'm placing it below as there is little I could do to improve it.
We started out in St Joseph and decided to head west towards Marysville KS to get a better idea of how far we wanted to go, do to the moisture situation. We sat there for a couple of hours and waited for initiation. Some stuff started popping by Grand Island NE. We went north after seeing some towers go up. We watched 2 or 3 storms go by, waiting on one to deviate and root. Finally the plan panned out, and the storm which had gorilla hail started moving toward us on the East side of Beatrice. The initial wall cloud was huge and fairly high based. It started to lower in and the low level rotation was very strong. The tornado lasted about 3.5 minutes. The storm became very rain wrapped and started moving right towards us. We pulled up to a little farm house and prepared for the RFD. This was the scariest part of the day. There was Debris and road gravel being thrown around everywhere. Our windows were pulsing and the back end of the 4 runner was trying to lift off the ground. We then tried to get next to a large barn, figuring that it would shield us from the flying debris. At this point we all were starting to really worry as to whether we were in another tornado, which seemed possible because the meso that occluded from the original tornado moved right over us. Bob then stated that we had "2 options, we are either going to die or we are not going to die." For some reason that made us feel a lot better, knowing that we had no control over the situation. Bob will post all the HD video and audio of the situation later. Anyway after 4 minutes of shear terror, we moved on. We looked at a couple of storms after that and everything looked to be outrunning the instability we then preceded back to St. Joseph and intercepted the storm that had a tornado about 5 min before we got there. All in all it was one hell of a chase.
The team of Miller/Hall both got stuck with deliverables and meetings that we could not get out of on Monday. After the early convection worked over the atmosphere, I resided myself to the fact this was complicated and we’d need a lot of luck. If we had had the time, we would have been in Kingfisher County, but we did not. Steve and I talked about 4:30 and agreed on a gentlemen’s chase. As we hit the road about 5:35 we saw the storm going up to the west of Mannford and decide to go get it. We would chase this storm through Tulsa, Owasso and on to Catoosa. It wrapped up several times and tried to get going, but never really produced any funnels that I saw. It looked pretty impressive as it moved of Tulsa’s downtown. Glad to see that a lot of friends got stuff out west and southwest. The vehicle tracking worked perfectly and NWS Tulsa was able to a track on us. http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/find.cgi?call=wx5sky&terra=4&radar=***
The previous two shots are outside Mannford, OK
Outside Sandsprings, OK
Downtown Tulsa, OK
Photographers note: The images were shot with an extreme wide angle that introduces some distortion. I was attempting to capture the amazing storm structure.
Sent several clips to KTUL that aired:
Early convection shot at Citiplex towers in Tulsa
Wind and rain halfway between Owasso and Collinsville
Flooding halfway between Owasso and Collinsville|W|P|114632745836090602|W|P||W|P|ChaseHelp@gmail.com