73 Wynnewood OK 19 May 2010

Date: 19 May 2010

Location: West Central, OK to Wynnewood, OK.

Chase Partner: Mark Farnik

Summary: We spent the night in Canadian, TX. A high risk was issued for the day 1 outlook for most of OK. We targeted Hinton, OK and perhaps a little south toward Anadarko. We got to Hinton and ran into a huge chaser convergence. While there a PDS tornado watch was issued and storms began firing in the NW Oklahoma region. We headed torward a storm that went TOR warned and produced a couple of tornadoes near Roll and Leedey, OK. We intercepted north of Putnam, OK. While enroute we ran into numerous Vortex 2 vehicles. We watched the storm approach Putnam and the chaser convergence grow. The storm didn't look that impressive and all the while more and more chasers and on lookers kept coming in. We headed back east toward Thomas and were going to reposition. The ammount of chasers and local yahoo's on this storm was insane and would only get worse. We opted to head south to what appeared to be a storm brewing off the Wichita Mountains and would make intercept near Chickasha. When we got to it we were wondering if we did the right thing as one report after another of tornadoes dropping from the storm we just left kept coming in. The storm near Chickasha was high based and rather boring to look at for some time. When it got on the NE side of Chickasha it looked a little better and had become surface based. It eventually went TOR warned but it never really could get its act together. Another storm formed and was even more isolated near Pauls Valley, OK. We headed the 30 miles south and intercepted near Wynnewood, OK. This was a gorgeous storm. It had great midlevel inflow and a nice rain free base. It was textbook! As it approached we shot quite a bit of timelapse footage and before the rain core got to us we headed a little bit more south. About 2 miles from us the surface inflow really increase and the lower level rotation became more organized. We escaped to the east and south in the jungles. We found the best place we could to see the storm pass and as it was due north and about 1.5 miles away it dropped a multiple vortex tornado and a satellite tornado soon formed on the west side of the wall cloud. The vantage point we had was horrible, but that is jungle chasing I guess. We headed more south and then back east on Highway 7. We chased this storm for about another hour as it looked spectacular on radar, but we could never really see anything except the occasional wall cloud back lit by the intense lightning. All in all, once again, another frustrating day at the start turned into a very satisfying chase.

A very cool looking barn near Hydro, OK.