31 May 2022
Ponca City, OK to Altus, OK
251 miles
I was up at 4:30 thanks to jet lag and spent the time trying to figure out my packing. There was a Walmart near the hotel so I walked there with a couple of others to pick up what I was missing.
We had a late start at 10:30 and got a full briefing. Bill was trying to decide between the southern vs northern storms straddling the Texas/Oklahoma border.
We headed out and stopped in at Blaze’s BBQ in Enid for lunch. I had an awesome philly cheesecake.
We continued to the southwest towards Arapaho to watch one of the northern storms.
It didn’t produce anything of note so we carried on towards Duke, Oklahoma.
We pulled off and parked under a gas station canopy in the town as they were expecting hail. The tornado sirens were already wailing.
We stayed for about thirty minutes and while it didn’t hail much, it gave us a preview of the rain that was to come.
As we drove out of the town, someone pointed out a billboard that said ‘Pray for Rain.”
After that night, someone was likely to spray paint ‘Don’t’ on top of it.
We left Duke and headed back towards Altus where we were staying for the night.
And we got stopped cold by the heaviest rain I’ve ever experienced. We spent about an hour pulled off on the shoulder waiting for the system to pass. It produced winds up to 76 mph, over four inches of rain and the lightning was constant.
We were only five miles from Altus and made a couple of attempts to continued on but only made it a few metres. Eventually it slacked enough for us to get into the town where the roads and parking lots were flooded and half the town was without power.
The half with our hotel.
We checked into the Microtel hotel and then went to Whataburger for a meal but had to do takeout as they had too much water on the floor inside. He wanted us to go out to the vehicle and order from the vans but we explained that it would be fourteen separate orders, so they said it would be fine if we took it to go.
Good burger.
The power returned after about a half hour. I had dumped everything on the bed and just gave up doing anything with it all and went to bed watching the lightning light up the room like a Christmas tree on steroids.
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Bill Reid’s entry on 31 May 2022