4/14/2011 Tushka Oklahoma Tornadic Supercell and some Lightning.

If the last chase event was memorable than this one certainly was.

This was another one of those "wake-up-call" type chases with this one involving the destruction of the town of Tushka Oklahoma. And surprisingly most storm chasers would consider it our most successful to date. I am kind of debating that since July 12th 2010 yielded much more beautiful photographs for us.

I was not at all expecting to chase this day and neither was James Langford. I had a physics lab that was supposed to go until about 5pm that afternoon and James had something else going on. But, wonder of wonders, I got out of lab early (around 3:30?) and James also got finished with (whatever it was he was doing) at about the same time.

He called me about the time I got out of lab (or I called him, can't remember) and he toled me that storms were already erupting on the dry line in Oklahoma. So, we decided to go ahead and make a quick run up 75 just to see what we could see. Justin Terveen also came with us.

There were a lot of storms up in Oklahoma but only one of them was really significant and it was the southern most one with the most unobstructed inflow. When we began our trip up 75 to basically target the area north of Durant Oklahoma the storm of interest was due north of Lake Texoma and drifting slowly east-northeast.  The chasers already on this storm got some amazing structure shots, but as it continued eastwards contrast under the storm began to decline.

We made it north of Durant just about the time the most intense circulation was fixing to cross the road. While we could see the supercell's overall structure the contrast was indeed terrible.

After grabbing some images here we decided that, just for kicks, we would drive underneath the base and see what was going on (sound familiar?).

From this point on I was focused on videoing our trip into the beast rather than taking stills. When we crossed underneath the meso there was a pronounced RFD cut... probably one of the most impressive ones I had seen up to this point (I say that about everything don't I?). As we drove further north a significant lowering emerged out of the merkey darkness ahead. Given its location under the storm  (north of the RFD with the RFD wrapping around the south side of it) I knew that it had to at least be a significant wall cloud. When it took on a distinct cone shape as it crossed 75 everything about it was screaming TORNADO. I was almost screaming tornado and I am not sure how I managed to sound so relaxed and composed on the video. The funny thing was is that James and Justin couldn't even see it due to the contrast being so bad on it. (James was focused on the road, and Justin was in the back seat).

As we got close enough to the feature to really see the spin we pulled over to the side of the road and filmed the rapidly rotating color cloud around the multi-vortex tornado and some of the vorticies underneath. I had never seen rotation on that scale before that close up. Despite this I was still second guessing myself about it actually being a tornado (the contrast never was that great and though I thought the feature was only about a mile or so away it was more like three or four).

We decided to continue on up 75 just to see if it indeed had been a tornado. And sure enough we crossed into a distinct damage path left be the tornado as it crossed the road.

The tornado was aparantly fairly wide since the damage just didn't end.

Looked like a weedeater tore through the area with all the trees snapped off at about the same hight.

It was about this point we decided to flip around. We thought that Atoka must have taken a hit and decided it would be best to flip around as soon as possible. What we didn't know was that, although the south side of Atoka apparently did get grazed, it was a small town called Tushka south of Atoka that took the brunt of the tornado. We really had no idea the town was even there as you couldn't really see much from 75.

We flipped around at probably the last place one could before the backup on 75. At that location a semi had been flipped but thankfully it appeared that the driver was ok with many people standing around. It sure didn't seem like we would be of any use there blocking even more traffic when many were already stopped along that stretch of road.

Once we flipped around we shot the storms well to the west that had developed along the steadily approaching dry line/cold front merger. We had a pretty decent display of lightning and mammatus in the fading light. (Though I didn't get much of the mammatus or the lightning).

This is a vertical panorama of the new cell due west of us with lightning and some mammatus.

I don't really know how long we sat at that spot along 75 south of Tushka but it was probably at least an hour. We were all kind of in some sort of state of "shock" or something. I was kind of flip flopping from between "wow we actually saw a tornado!"  and "oh my gosh thats a lot of ambulances." There were a lot of ambulances that came north the entire time we were trying to photograph lightning. And it really drove home the point that while I really enjoy these storms someone else doesn't. I still can't seem to quite grasp what the appropriate response to something like this is. Especially when you originally came out for a good time and nothing more.  But we still didn't know that Tushka had been demolished (though the number of ambulances definitely indicated that something major had happened).

To wrap up the chase we headed back down into Texas with a squall line rapidly blowing up on what was now the cold front. We stopped in northeast Collin County and let it run us over. That was quite fun with the marble size hail and frequent lightning. The lightning on the backside was actually surprisingly good, and extremely frequent. So frequent that it was hard to get a bad shot.

The next day there was a big discussion amongst the three of us about the event and how we should be better prepaired for this stuff. As it turns out not only was Tushka severely damaged but police, fire, and EMS were overwhelmed. On Storm Track and on Spotter Network there was a call for any chasers in the area to lend a hand with the search and rescue due to the overwhelmed officials. Since we didn't have the lap top that day we had no idea that any of this was occurring and it stung. (At least to me it did). I generally have the idea that one should avoid disaster scenes as much as possible... but that isn't the case when any help is called for and one is able to lend that help. The bigger question now is whether we could've even been of any help and an even bigger question is what to do when this sort of thing happens in the future.

As a chaser for me it is all about enjoying the storms and getting a good photograph. But, unfortunatly, that is the view held be 99% of all chasers (even the ones claiming to provide life saving information). Most chasers do not even call in a tornado when it occurs but instead reach for the camera. It just doesn't seem to make since trying to get a clear report through to the NWS when the road is packed with chasers all watching the same tornado. Surely several of them have already reported it right? WRONG! Or at least wrong has been the answer on numerous events I have heard.

I will say that there were many chasers who did assist in the search and rescue efforts that evening thanks to the news of the disaster spreading quickly amongst them. 

Any way, as far as personal convictions I hope to attempt to put reporting and being ready to assist in higher priority. Well see if I actually learned anything I guess. 

This event did also spark more thought provoking questions about the sovereignty of God and why he allows (or causes) these things to happen. I mean, I always try to give him the glory whenever a forecast is successful (I suspect someone is laughing at this since I hardly ever openly state such and certainly don't act like it or I may even forget to) since it is he that brings all this about in the first place. And though it was awesome to be on such an awesome storm its also tough to swallow the fact that the same thing that caused me happiness killed at least a couple of people, injured many more, and left many more homeless. 

And now I don't know where exactly to go with all this since it is now 2:30am and that gives me a good excuse to drop the ball here. 

I still enjoy storms and chasing... can't get over that.