Sunday Chase

Yesterday was a bit more relaxed of a chase. The three of us were joined by Jim in a drive out to western Oklahoma for a slight chance at severe weather.



(regional map on the left, chase map on the right... icons indicate places discussed in writeup)

It was quite an enjoyable day.



By the time we arrived out there in Enid in early afternoon, a few storm towers were starting to go up, but nothing too spectacular.
So we made a quick detour to the Great Salt Plains Lake in northern Oklahoma.
It took a little while, but we finally found the main park. We were told there was a better view, though, up on the north side of the lake.
However, by the time we got there, storms were going severe, and we had to continue onward.

We made our way to near the city of Alva, Oklahoma, and ended up staying near there for about the next 2 hours. The best vantage point we could find was a few miles south of town, where we had two nice thunderstorms within our view.
Both would cycle between looking good and not-so-good repeatedly as they skirted by to our west and north. They had some nice looking wall clouds, but the problem for the longest time is there wasn't much rotation in the storms. Still, it was some awesome scenery, seeing these powerful storms coupled with the full wheat fields throughout the area.




After making a quick run back up to Alva for a bathroom break, we had to move further east because the storms were finally starting to impact the area. The storms reportedly had baseball sized hail... and I'm not about to sit around for that!

The storms started to really surge to the east, and we had to detour quite a ways to get back southeast of them.

We finally found a small road to get back nearer the storm, and were treated with some nice chaotic rotation on a very strong storm.
This didn't last long, though, and wasn't going to do much, since the storm was once again gusting out.

Finally we made our way even further south in attempts to get near a storm much further west.

We were finally moving towards the storm when we stumbled upon some really beautiful scenery: the Glass Mountains.
We decided to let the storm come to us and go explore this STUNNING area. Me and Josh hiking up to the top of the slopes while Chris and Jim explored the base.


We only got to stay a few more minutes as the rain was getting closer and lightning was starting to move in... and it took quite a few minutes to get back down and out of the park.


By the time we got to the car it was just starting to rain heavily.
We made our way back east a little ways to clearer air and took a few pictures, trying to capture lightning hitting where we just were.



But once more this storm was outflow dominant, and it quickly surged to where we were.




So we called the chase, and started moving east towards food and home.
We opted to stop at Freddy's Frozen Custard in Enid.
We ordered and considered whether we should get it to go or stop. I needed a break and it looked like there were still about 15 minutes until the storm came in, so we decided to eat quick.

Wrong choice.
Just as we finished up, it started pouring.
So we hung around the while, not interested in running out to the car in the deluge or driving through it.
It rained very hard for a good 45 minutes, the road outside flooding with water, and the power flickering 3 or 4 times due to close lightning strikes.
Finally it let up a bit and we worked our way home. We had to detour to try and avoid the strongest of the storms, but it was still another tough drive. We finally got home around midnight.

Another fun day for the logs.


And it has rained ever since we got home, basically. We considered chasing down into southern Oklahoma, but we're glad we didn't as it turned out to be a big bust, and we needed to catch up on sleep.
We'll probably go to Fudruckers with Jim tonight, then head down to Norman in the morning to watch a seminar and explore the Oklahoma campus for the afternoon... then head off to setup for a good storm setup Wednesday.
Almost a whole week down already.
Time sure flies!

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Have a good day!