April 2004 Chases (7 of them)
I did 7 storm chases during April 2004. I think this is a personal record for April
with a total
of almost 2900 miles. This, however, was a month of mostly crappy chases with lots of
outflow dominated storms and no tornados. (There were just a few tornados seen in the
southern plains during this period.)
April 9, 2004 Chase-Southeast Oklahoma...chasing to the forest
Today's chase was a marginal chase that many chasers skipped. Andy and I left Norman about Noon with a Ardmore target in mind. We ended up the day in Talihena in far southeast Oklahoma.
I took some outflow video to make into a timelapse:
CLICK HERE for the 3MB .wmv format version (best)
April 17, 2004-Total Bust NW Oklahoma
Tonya and I took a little drive to northwest Oklahoma. A picture from the end of the "chase"
April 20, 2004-Northeast Oklahoma chase
The target for Andy and I on this day was Chautauqua, KS. I wanted to get into the better backed air near the OK/KS border and for most of the day appeared to be a good target. Eventually, we ended up back in Oklahoma watching a storm west of Bartlesville, OK.
An interesting time lapse of the gustfront approaching Bartlesville:
CLICK HERE for high quality .wmv (2MB)
CLICK HERE for lower quality .wmv (1MB)
April 21, 2004-High drama in Oklahoma City
Target for today was "near my house" in Yukon, Oklahoma. Christine and I went out west and then followed the storm north and then east across the city. We were beneath the alleged "strong rotation" for the entire trip across OKC. When we got a bit ahead of the storm near I-35 and NW 63rd, we stopped to watch.
We followed the storm east to around Choctaw where I gave up and returned home as both the terrain and potential of the storms declined.
April 23, 2004-SW Oklahoma Walters storm and north Texas crud
Tonya and I left Norman very late after my Java lab. (Java sucks!) The plan was to get to my target city of the day: Burkburnett, Texas. (Yes...I still hate the place!) As we heard the reports of tornado on the Grandfield storm (5 miles north of my target city...LOL) Interestingly, in a week of reported "bad reporting", this tornado is not in the storm reports for the day. We adjusted east a bit at LAW to put us in a better position to intecept at Walters. The storm:
After this, we moved east with the storm to the Empire City area and then gave up and went south into Texas. We met up with some golf players and then went west and south to intercept a storm that no longer existed.
April 25, 2004-A chase day alone in SW Oklahoma.
This day I tried to stay home and study but couldn't resist the urge to go watch the storms. I went first west on I-40 to 183 then south in front of the storms eventually ending up in Wilbarger County Texas in time to watch a spectacular dust eating thunderstorm.
Very good timelapse (15x) of the storm:
CLICK HERE for high quality .wmv file (6MB)
CLICK HERE for lower quality .wmv file (1MB)
Some pictures from this storm:
April 30, 2004-Late start then north Texas crud
The target area was SW of SPS but I was stuck in class until 2:00p.m. (Java sucks) Matt and I left Norman at 2:00pm to head south and try to get down south where storms were ongoing. As we were pulling out of the Sarkey's parking lot, I turned on the ham where it immediately picked up 147.045 with somebody reporting a tornado on the ground near Petrolia, Texas. I immediately realized that things would probably be linear before we could get south, but I figured it was worth the effort. We didn't see much. I did discover that there was a way to cross the Red River north of Saint Jo, TX which wasn't on my maps. We eventually gave up and drove home.
An appropriate end to this chase month. Seven chases, 2879.8 miles, no tornados, a bunch of poorly rotating wallclouds, lots of outflow, and the end of another even numbered month in the even numbered year.
