24.05.2025: Wichita Falls - Elk City, OK - Leedey - Crawford - Elk City - Wichita Falls, TX (411 miles)
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Big storms forecast for northwestern Oklahoma today, 10% tornado risk, a dream set-up of
mesoscale conditions, at least in the lowest 2 kilometer of the atmosphere... A bit higher
up in the air, there are some issues (relatively warm temperatures, weak forcing due to
ridging), which we try to ignore while driving north towards Elk City. Near the town of Leedey, we stay and observe the sky for hours, as it tries to overcome the inhibitions. Other chasers including Reed Timmer are passing by in the search for the location of storm initiation. Further more, we are very pleased to meet the well-respected and very successful chaser friend Dean Gill from Switzerland. Meanwhile, in late afternoon, the sky is finally showing some sign of activity:   We drive a little closer to another developing storm and see this bomb of a cloud shooting up to 60'000 feet (18 km) near the town of Roll, Oklahoma:  Immediately after this shot, we navigate under the updraft in order to catch any brief spin-ups or better with the last remaining daylight. But there is nothing, despite radar induced tornado warning on this cell:  It begins to throw some strong lightning, some of whichsound like canon fire:   The car lights come from other storm chasers. There is a literal Saturday night chaser party going on here in Roll, Oklahoma. Everyone is here, in the middle of nowhere, under the canon thunder monster, that is something amazing if you think about it:  Just after we lose the rest of the daylight, we increase our distance to the storm and catch this:  Then the storms dies quickly and we head home back south. Another cluster of gusty and flickering storms ravages through the southern side of the Red River and is headed into our home base town:  Immediately after our arrival, we grab our tripods once more and catch some of this urban electricity, just outside our living room:    |