June 15, 2019
“321 GO? NO! Okay. 321 GO!”
Hugoton, KS to Clinton, OK (688 km)
I still couldn’t sleep passed six. I got up, had a shower in the nicest shower I’d had on tour so far and went down to see off the mini-tour A people…complete with a photobob.
I got the pic and they loaded me up with goodies they didn’t want to take with them.
At ten, the five from tour six got together for the briefing. Everything was pointing to Oklahoma, but they weren’t sure, so we headed east as they watched the computer to get a better picture on the day.
We got to Woodward, OK and they were confident Oklahoma was the best intercept area. We stopped for lunch at Chase’s BBQ, a place that one reviewer had said the food had been better in prison.
Well, if food in prison was like this, people wouldn’t want to leave. I had a turkey sandwich smothered with coleslaw. Real turkey, not turkey loaf.
From here, after a grand tour of gas stations in Woodward, we continued east watching crazy dew points like 80 degrees with 74 dew points. This would be good conditions for lower bases and better storms than we had been seeing at higher elevation.
We drove east, meandering around Ringwood and Okeene watching the clouds get nice and puffy in the hot, humid air. So humid, it was almost hard to get a full breath. Instability was quite high but so was the cap, but Bill expected the high CAPE (the ability for the air to break through the cap, or layer of warm air aloft) would be able to produce a decent storm. We were expecting something big.
It was almost seven before we got into chase mode and Bill settled on a system to our southwest. We drove through trees that would have put Iowa to shame and came out to an open field to this.
I set up my time-lapse and it looks it may have caught the formation of the Putnam tornado.
We stayed for about a half hour watching the lightning.
Then BOOM!
And seven people ran back to the van faster than the sixteen ran last month.
We took highway 33 past Custer City as the sun set and we pulled over off the highway to watch the storm illuminated by the lightning.
By now, it was believed to be a large rain-wrapped wedge tornado moving south-southwest.
We headed south along route 187 towards Clinton with the cell following the same route behind us. The rain, winds and lightning were pretty fierce. As we got to the interstate overpass, there were emergency vehicles next to a crumpled guard rail. We learned later that a woman and her two children were in a vehicle that rolled over the embankment. A chaser had stopped and kept a fire in the engine from spreading while a local tried to open the car doors. The fire and EMS were there minutes later and managed to extricate the three. Moments later, the fire spread into the passenger compartment.
We got onto the interstate going east in extremely heavy rain and straight line winds that were recorded as high as 92 mph. Cars on the interstate were doing crazy things, changing lanes and then putting on the brakes or speeding by at speeds much too fast for the conditions. It was a white knuckle drive.
By the time we got to the next turnoff, we exited to get away from the deteriorating conditions. A large dangerous tornado was reported in Custer City area and had followed the same highway 187 south to the interstate.
We pulled off and parked on the east side of a tractor supply warehouse and watched debris get blown across the parking lot in front of us.
Other cars pulled in behind us and we waited until the wind and rain improved before heading out. Bill asked if anyone needed a pit stop.
I guessed we all needed to change our underwear.
We stopped at McDonald’s and then headed back west to Clinton to the Econolodge.
It took me until midnight to wind down, do some laundry and then I slept like a log.
Go to Day Seven
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See also: Bill Reid’s entry on 15 June