Monday, May 3, 1999

Initial Target: Chickasha, OK
What Was Seen: Four Tornadoes (pics are of the 1st tornado only), Nice Classic Supercell Structure, Tennis Ball Size Hail
Partner(s): Casey Gaither, Dan Horenstein

[CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE]

The Big One Hits...

What a chase. Almost impossible to believe that such an historic tornado outbreak will go down in the chase logs as my first succesful storm chase! Wow...just wow. Anyway, the first pics are in. All of the tornado pictures are of the first one we saw...from the same storm (storm "A") that went on to produce the horrific F5 damage across areas near Newcastle, Moore, and southern OKC. The LPish storm structure shot is of storm "B" from at least 20 miles away. Storm "B" went on to produce a monster F4 wedge tornado that devestated the small town of Mulhall, OK later in the evening. These pics are scans of photo prints. I didn't have a video camcorder at the time!! ... but this poor college student was sure to get one the very next week! Never chasing "unarmed" like that again...

Check out this radar image from the KTLX (Twin Lakes, OK) WSR-88D taken at 2317Z -- around the same time most of the photos were taken. Also, a GPS plot of our track (with markers for our photo locations) and the approximate track of the tornado west of Chickasha can be found HERE.

Also, a great May 3rd event summary page was put together by the National Weather Service office in Norman, Oklahoma. Click HERE for that.

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Last Updated: Jan 4, 2000
Dave Demko