October 4, 1998

I wasn't really looking to chase this day, since I was supposed to be studying for a Dynamics exam. Apparently conditions were sufficiently unstable and sheared, since around 3:30, a supercell was moving near the Kansas-Oklahoma border. This storm was out of reach, but my roomate Lacey Holland and I noticed some developing echoes on the radar farther south, so we took off (Lacey drove) for the area just northwest of OKC.

At first visibility was pretty bad, so we stopped at the Kingfisher Wal-Mart to see radar images from the Weather Channel. After getting this info we took off west on Highway 3/33. Our only source of data, my weather radio, started to fuzz out, so we turned on the car radio in search of information. Lo and behold, Channel 9 was broadcasting audio on one of the radio stations, talking about a tornado near Watonga, OK. After a few miles we saw it ourselves, a thin hose travelling north. The tornado, shown below, remained on the ground for quite a while.


After the tornado dissipated, we headed north, but hung back a bit to avoid being right underneath the updraft. We got behind the storm and followed it to the northeast, where it eventually produced another tornado near Dover, OK. (Hard to see since the contrast was bad.)


We drove through the damage path from the Dover tornado on Highway 81, trying to follow the storm further to the northeast, were it was producing another tornado near Stillwater. Unfortunately, we were by that time too far behind and it was getting dark so we headed for home. As we approached Moore on the way home, heavy rain made it difficult to see, so we pulled off of I-35 to the Pickles resteraunt. We ordered dinner and watched the radar reports on their TV. A nice hook echo, was evident, and seemed to be headed in our direction! After a transformer blew outside, everyone was herded into the basement. Afterwards, we found out that the Moore tornado's damage path that night stopped just before reaching our location.