23 May 2019
“Get back in the van!”
Clinton, OK to Childress, TX (955 km)
I was up and out for a walk where I came across a number of cats. When we met for our orientation at ten, one of them wanted to stay with us.
The targets for the day were all within range of OKC for our return drive on the last day. We headed west, making a brief stop in Elk City to view the house where the group had volunteered to help clean up after a tornado had struck the area in 2013.
There were some empty lots where people had not rebuilt.
From here we booted it west into Texas, stopping at a rest stop and museum with this sign outside.
You don’t have to tell me twice.
As we drove west, we finally came out from under the cloud and smoke in Amarillo. A mesoscale discussion was posted warning of severe weather for most of the Texan panhandle with the risk of long track tornadoes.
Bill decided on storms that were initiating south of Lubbock, Texas, so we headed south, stopping in Plainview for lunch. I tried Chicken Express.
From here, we drove to Brownfield and turned west. Two storms had formed, one behind the other.
The problem with this is that the storms tend to rob each other of the ingredients necessary to grow into a supercell. In this case, the second cell’s rain could have been interrupting the updraft of the leading storm.
Our first stop was for a lightning display near a wall cloud forming on the lead storm.
After about ten minutes, the lightning was getting close and one series of instantaneous bolts and thunder screamed, “get back to the van!”
As I picked up my time-lapse camera, it kept shooting and caught one in the series of “get in the van” bolts.
I’ve never seen sixteen people run so fast. This time-lapse video from Chris Gullikson’s GoPro missed the bolt that sent us scrambling, but I never thought we could all run that fast.
The lightning eased off afterwards and we started following the two storms towards Lubbock.
The first storm regained its strength, so we went forward to catch that and watched it for a few minutes.
Nothing dropped and we waited around to see the second storm.
The dust was getting in the way.
There were a couple of decent dust devils.
Storms to the north had spawned tornadoes but nothing was produced by the southern storms. We stopped to watch the sun set through the haze and dust.
And telephone wires.
We drove for an hour an a half to Childress for a night at the Day’s Inn.
We returned to Oklahoma City the next day, driving four hours and dropping most of the group at the airport. I flew out the Denver that night but the flight had to take a detour due to storms over the same spot we had been the day before.
The map for the day shows our drive back to OKC and my flight taking the indirect route to Denver.
The increased tornadic activity continued for several more days, spawning massive tornadoes including one near Kansas City and Lawrence. Unbelievably, the number of deaths were quite low. I like to think the instantaneous reports from storm chasers help warn people, getting them out of the area or into shelters just a little bit faster.
From here, I did a self drive to Yellowstone, the Tetons, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef National and Rocky Mountain Parks as well as several mountain ranges and passes in Colorado.
On June 10th, I started Tour Six and continued on with Tour Seven with Tempest.
Go to Day One of Tour Six
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