Headed south on I-35 trying to meet a boundary coming out of North Texas. Waited east of Pauls Valley, OK
watching cumulus with great shear profiles build and die. At 2000z SPC issued PDS Tornado watch, and we watched as a storm tried
to build for about 20 minutes. It finally broke the cap and was building rapidly so we drove north through
Seminole in that direction. Driving E of I-40 heard numerous accounts of a tornado on the ground moving NE at
20mph.
Took HW 2 south underneath the anvil with nice mammatus overhead to Whitefield, OK to see the storm from the SE. We drove east on HWY 9 before pulling off and getting my truck stuck in a foot of mud that deceptively looked like solid soil. So I had a local help me pull the truck out while the wall cloud was moving in from the west. We were a bit shaken from this, and it was a stupid thing to do, but at least we were okay. At least we weren't endangering other people... just ourselves.
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At around 2345z we tracked this storm as it paralleled HW 9 moving just N of Whitefiled, then procedded through Stigler where damage was reported but thankfully no people were injured. At 7:17pm CDT I got a Mesonet severe wind report on my pager with the Stigler Mesonet station reporting a wind gust of 92 mph.
The gust front which caused these winds caught up with us a number of times, and as we were driving E on HW 9 through Keowa, OK around 0030z, the gust front entered the town and while driving at about 40-45mph a 4x6 ft metal "arrow" advertising sign was pushed across the road and right in front of my truck. I hit the brakes immediately and cut to the right, missing the sign by less than 4 feet. This being the second close-call today we were even more shaken up. We proceeded on HW 9 and turned south on HW 271, where we then had a nice view of the second storm to the SW of the first, as seen on the 0027z KSRX radar below.
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We stopped just south of Panama, OK on a hill along HW 271 and photographed the Stigler storm to the north as it was spitting out lightning, and at the same time we had the storm to the west approaching us. We were able to photograph from this location for about 30 minutes before the rain reached us and had to move further to the south. At about 0145z we passed through Poteau, OK with lightning flashes consuming almost the entire sky, at a total rate of maybe 5-7 per second.
Proceeding south on 271 through Wistler, to the junction with HW 272 through Page, OK, we were hearing reports of developing wall clouds and tornadoes progressing towards Whistler and Heavaner, OK, locations which we had passed through just minutes earlier. We're not sure if there were any tornadoes in the area at the time, but I would rather that there were not, and the locals were reacting to the earlier storms in Oklahoma and calling in any cloud feature that looked tall and skinny. We drove E into Arkansas on HW 272 to Acorn, AR with frequent lightning continuously around us, then traveled north on HW 71 into Scott county at about the same time that a tornado warning was issued for Scott. We stopped at a gas station in Y City, AR at about 0345z and watched as another small storm passed by, all the while people inside the gas station were saying that there were tornadoes in Page and Whistlet, OK. They seemed to take a tornado warning mentioning the names of towns to register as a full-blown tornado on the ground in that city.
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Anyways, after a while waiting out the rain we drove N on 71 past Huntington, AR and found sa small church with a drive-thru opening in front which we shot lightning from for almost 2 hours. We captured many lightning channels in that area as a newly formed squall line moved through to the SE. The closest channel was about 500ft away and struck a telephone pole in full view of our eyes and my camera, sending charred splinters flying into the air.
We drove N to Fort Smith, then took I-40 west back to Norman, arriving home at 1130z, or 6:30am CDT. 612 miles later, many tornadoes reported, but no tornado seen. We saw a very nice wall cloud, nice mammatus, and some of the best lightning I've ever seen in Oklahoma.
On an additional note, the Salisaw OLETS base was hit by lightning at about 11:00pm CDT, and all SALSbase Mesonet stations weren't able to report for hours!
Other Chase Summaries