April 14, 2001 -- Jeff Lawson's Chase Page

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April 14, 2001 -- Roosevelt, OK

Chase Team: Jeff Lawson, Scott Blair, Jason Politte

Left Denton, TX around 11:30am, no specific target in mind, simply headed for an area between Lawton and Childress. I drove through some elevated storms as I approached Wichita Falls. One storm managed to produce one lightning bolt and one lightning bolt only...about 10 yards away from my car. As the flash was burned into my retina, I was able to re-focus and see a utility pole and transformer on the side of the road exploding in a shower of sparks. I figured that was a sign it would be a good day.

I finally made my way into Quanah, watching promising towers go up all around me, when I spied a stout looking tower to my north in Oklahoma. Deciding that the dry-line/boundary intersection was probably up in that area, I headed north on Hwy. 6 through Eldorado, ending up in Duke, OK. The tower was beginning to actually look like a storm and was starting to glaciate on top, so I figured the show was about to get going. Headed north on Hwy. 34 towards Magnum in order to get a better look at the base. As I cleared a hill, a large, dark base came into view. As I cleared another hill, I came across a small pack of chasers: Scott Blair, Jason Politte, Al Pietrycha, and a couple of other people I didn't recognize. This was very heartening, as I had yet to see another chaser up to that point in the day, and I was driving partnerless.

About that time, a tornado warning was issued on the storm, and we decided we needed to head east. Scott, Jason, and I drove back south to Duke and then east to Altus, where we then headed north on 283 to Blair. We then drove east on 19, stopping for a moment as it made a northward jog. The storm was trying to wrap up, and the RFD was beginning to punch in...we only had one east road option, though, and we had to make it quick before the storm caught up. Blasted east on 19 to Roosevelt, where we stopped to watch an occlusion forming to the southwest of the old meso. We were having some trouble keeping track of inflow/outflow at the time, as our surface winds kept switching direction for seemingly no reason. It made it very difficult to get a good idea of the broad structure of the storm.

As we sat in Roosevelt, the old meso (now just to our north) suddenly wrapped up, and a large funnel formed. It was whitish-gray, and the rain curtains and low scud were wrapping around it quickly. I figured it was about to tornado (it might have), but our view became obstructed as it moved east and outflow rapidly approached. We continued east to Cooperton, unable to get a good visual on the meso due to mountains, and then headed south on 54 as outflow nipped at our heels. And that's when we lost the storm.

We drove into the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge to get east of the mountains, and it was as if we were suddenly transported to another place. Low hanging clouds and fog shrouded the mountains, with little evidence that there was a huge storm just a few miles to the north. Eventually, we encountered slow traffic in the form of day-trippers gawking at the buffalo standing on the side of the road. To top if all off, we made a wrong turn heading out of the park, and ended up going due south instead of east. We ended up back on 62 west of Lawton, as the storm moved up to near Apache. Adios storm.

We were now in cool, overcast conditions...a quick nowcasting call told us about storms firing near Vernon and Frederick, so we decided to head back in that direction since those storms would be south of the boundary, in the warm sector. Those storms never materialized, and we ended up heading south to Vernon in anticipation of more storms which had fired north of Abilene. Decided to head into Wichita Falls for dinner and wait for the storms to come to us. However, we made a data stop first, and radar showed a cell to our west which had split: the right mover was chugging along a boundary which showed up on radar, and the left-mover was zipping north. It's kind of hard to pass up an anticyclonic storm, so off we went. By the time we got to Mankins, we realized that the storm was toast. Luckily, there was some beautiful mammatus on the underside of the orphan anvil, the remains of the left-moving storm backlit by the setting sun. It was a great scene...used a lot of film out there.

The sun set, our Texas storms died a noble death, and we headed back to Wichita Falls for pizza and a break. I then headed back to Denton, and Scott and Jason struck out for the long drive back to Little Rock.

All in all, it was a satisfying chase. It felt pretty good to target a general area and literally drive right up to the big storm of the day in SW OK as it was just getting going. I had plenty of towers to choose from, and I managed to pick the right one. Not to mention, it really was a great looking storm. After several chases involving storms which either didn't look anything like they were supposed to, were surrounded by clouds and haze, or were moving at 80 mph (ahem, April 6), it was nice to see a storm that actually looked like and acted like a supercell for a change. The sunset and dying storms back in Texas weren't too shabby either.