13 May 2019
“And so it begins…”
Oklahoma City to Wichita (537 km)
As the 2019 season started for me, all eyes today were on the weekend. Some active weather last week had cleared out the good air and a ridge through the Gulf had cut off the good moisture for a few days. But the set-up for later in the week was looking very good.
So good, Reed Timmer had said on Twitter: “the end of next week could be the start of one of the more active periods this generation of storm chasers will remember! Reminds me of early May 2003 and late season 2004 with day after day of tornado potential, ski-jump upper-level setups! Starting next Friday.”
My first thought was whether or not his mother would be able to go for a walk and find a tornado.
The late week setup was the theme for our introduction meeting at 10:30 in the morning. Bill Reid, Chris Gullikson and Bob Conzemius introduced themselves to a group of people that they all knew except for three newbies. After a quick round of introductions, Bill showed us a new video created by Martin Lisius to explain the safety procedures and other information.
Then Bill went through the maps and data, giving the newbies a basic overview of storm forecasting and explained the expectations for the next few days. We broke up at noon and headed west out of Oklahoma City.
Lunch was at the Crooked Arrow in Seiling, OK. I had a chicken fajita wrap with green beans on the side. It was quite good.
As we moved on around three, the radar showed some storms popping up to the northwest.
We were headed towards Woodward, so we turned around and headed north towards Waynoka. We made a stop and I played with my camera set up, putting one camera on a time lapse and holding up my cell phone with a lightning trigger app going.
I caught my first bolt of the season.
The system split, and usually, they would follow the cyclonic right split as it presents the better opportunities for tornadoes, but we followed the anti-cyclonic left split instead. We drove through an area of hail that was about dime or nickel sized and the newbies were loving it.
We made a couple more stops and passed through Cherokee where we saw a nice display.
We kept going east and then turned to go north but went back south so that we could hide the sun behind this cloud.
We pulled down a road and Bill pointed up at a horizontal funnel cloud in the system. It’s the light coloured tube in the middle of the pic.
Then the system started to dissipate.
It was a better day than expected and Bill later said the daytime heating along with existing moisture in the ground helped these storms grow. There were a lot of large puddles or small ponds everywhere from the wet spring they had had.
By eight, we headed to Wellington for a late dinner at Braum’s, stopping for a quick sunset pic.
After we ate, we headed into Wichita, staying at the same Best Western we stayed in twice during Tour 3 in 2017.
By midnight, I’d downloaded the photos and stuff, and at least according to my Fitbit, I was out like a light.
Go to Day Two
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