CHASE REPORTS
MAY 10th 2010
Today was forecast to be one of the most active chase days of the season as there was a high risk of severe weather predicted, including the threat of long track violent tornadoes in the states of Oklahoma and Kansas
This would be a particularly difficult chase day due to the fast storm motion, moving around 60 mph. This would make any storm near impossible to keep up with. There was also huge chaser convergence expected due to the high expectations of the days setup, that could also make possitioning extremely tough
We decided to head north from Norman OK to intercept the storms as they fired up.
We hit the road towards our initial target area of Enid and a few storms began to fire up along interstate 35, that quickly became supercellular.
We reached the town of Cherokee to see baseball sized hail of 4 to 5 inch laying on the ground with alot of damage unsurprisingly to homes and cars. As we headed further north we saw numerous trucks flipped on their side possibly by a tornado that had been reported moments earlier. As we continued on a roof of a house flew past which I managed to capture on video.
Then we witnessed our first brief tornado spin up in Medford OK, before witnessing the second, another brief touchdown outside Wakita.
The storm though was racing ahead of us so we positioned ourselves for the southern storm but by the time it reached us it was beginning to die.
Unfortunately a storm to our south near our base town of NORMAN proved to have produced a number of tornadoes causing alot of damage there and also in areas along I-40 to the east.
Unfortunately five fatalities have been reported with these storms.
This would be a particularly difficult chase day due to the fast storm motion, moving around 60 mph. This would make any storm near impossible to keep up with. There was also huge chaser convergence expected due to the high expectations of the days setup, that could also make possitioning extremely tough
We decided to head north from Norman OK to intercept the storms as they fired up.
We hit the road towards our initial target area of Enid and a few storms began to fire up along interstate 35, that quickly became supercellular.
We reached the town of Cherokee to see baseball sized hail of 4 to 5 inch laying on the ground with alot of damage unsurprisingly to homes and cars. As we headed further north we saw numerous trucks flipped on their side possibly by a tornado that had been reported moments earlier. As we continued on a roof of a house flew past which I managed to capture on video.
Then we witnessed our first brief tornado spin up in Medford OK, before witnessing the second, another brief touchdown outside Wakita.
The storm though was racing ahead of us so we positioned ourselves for the southern storm but by the time it reached us it was beginning to die.
Unfortunately a storm to our south near our base town of NORMAN proved to have produced a number of tornadoes causing alot of damage there and also in areas along I-40 to the east.
Unfortunately five fatalities have been reported with these storms.