April 2, 1999
On this chase I took off with Danny Cheresnick (driver) and Tony Waters,
while we followed Jeff Basara and Brian Fehrn in Jeff's Jeep. After
stopping for gas and reevaluation north of Lawton, we headed further
southwest. By the time we reached Altus, OK, towers were starting to go
off along the dryline, both to our north and south. We decided to go for
the northern cells, which were closer to the cold front but we thought had
better dynamic support for tornadoes.
As we drove north on Highway 6, the cell developed into a very well
defined supercell. I took tons of pictures, but none of them turned out
as nice as the storm looked in real life. By the time we caught up with
the storm just east of Elk City, a wall cloud was evident. We pulled
over to take a look, but rotation was no longer as well defined and we
were soon hit with some pretty strong outflow. Still, it was not a bad
chase for the first one of the season.