The big adventure came while I was trying to get home. One storm had fired near Fort Cobb and another had fired down near Lawton. I was trying to sneak between them in order to get home, which, looking back on it, may not have been the best decision. However, there was a huge difference between this storm and the storms that ravaged Oklahoma at the end of May: this storm had absolutely zero tornado threat. The main threat was hail between quarter and golf ball size, which will not kill you.

Further complicating the matter was that I was driving through an area that had very little cell service, so getting reliable radar updates proved to be quite difficult. As I passed Mountain View and continued east on Highway 9, I could see a clearing to the east and a clear slot between the two storms for me to pass, so I pressed on. I had been in contact with my dad, and he was able to describe what the radar looked like.

By the time I got to Fort Cobb, the two storms began to dissolve into a line. The curtains of precipitation were closing in on me and it felt like they were closing very fast. I was finally able to re-establish a reliable cell connection and could get radar updates reliable. The run from Anadarko to Chickasha was tense, but I knew as long as I could still see the bright area to the east, I still had a chance to beat the storms. Having the radar updates again was a huge help, as I could tell that the big hail core was still way down by Lawton, so if the storms did swallow me, I would only be dealing with heavy rain and wind.

I made it through Chickasha and east of the storms just as the gap between the two storms closed. Again, I want to stress that there was only heavy rain in there and possibly some small hail, so I would not have been putting myself in a huge amount of danger if I did get caught in there. I scurried home to Norman ahead of the storm. It came through Norman about half an hour after I got home struggling to maintain itself above severe limits. It dumped a lot of rain on us, and I saw a few wind gusts around 50 mph, but that was it.

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The front itself was one of the strongest I’ve ever seen. The temperature gradient was impressive, with temps in the mid-70’s in Paul’s Valley, and temps were in the mid-40’s in Oklahoma City, about 40 miles away. Apparent temps (heat index/wind chill) ranged from the low 80’s in southeast Oklahoma to near zero in the panhandle.

One amazing feature of this front was that it was quite shallow for such a powerful front, extending only about 1 km or so up into the atmosphere. With the large amount of instability on the warm side of the front, this created a very unique setup, as the atmosphere retained its large instability aloft behind the front despite surface temperatures in the 20s and 30s. As a result, a line of severe thunderstorms broke out across northwest Oklahoma. The town of Arnett witnessed golf ball sized hail and freezing rain falling out of a severe thunderstorm at the same time, with a surface temperature of 27°F.

Then there was the ice storm. It was one of the most severe ice storms to ever hit Oklahoma in the month of April. It is extremely rare to get ice storms in Oklahoma in April, much less one of this severity. Western and northwestern Oklahoma got hit the hardest, with ice accumulations as high as half an inch in places. Parts of Norman reported a very light glazing of ice, but I did not see anything either at the house or while I was out driving around that morning.

When it was all said and done, many locations across Oklahoma experienced a 24-hour temperature drop between 40 and 60 degrees. It was an impressive consolation prize for the lack of severe weather (thanks to the pesky cap).It is an extraordinary event I will remember for a while, too.

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Storms formed in the late afternoon near Lawton, OK and started moving to the northeast. One was particularly persistent and long-lived and was tracking right up Interstate 44. I left home around 6:30 PM and headed west on Highway 9 to chase it.

One of the golden rules to chasing monster storms like this, especially when they have a history of producing huge hail, is that you need to give them a wide berth as they can grow or shift course without warning. It is also a very good idea on days like this to keep yourself between the storm and home so you don’t get trapped. I headed south on Highway 76 out of Blanchard down the eastern flank of the storm, looking for good shots.

It quickly became obvious that I needed to get back east to get a better shot of the storm, so I turned east on the 74B Spur where I got some good shots of the storm. I then continued south on Highway 74, getting much better shots of the storm. I found a large open gravel parking lot at the junction of Highways 74 and 24 where I could stop and get more great shots of the storm. I had to keep an eye on the radar though.

A short while later, the storm did make a right hand turn and was red-lined for Norman, so I had to scurry home ahead of it. Thankfully, I was only about 15 minutes from home, and the storm turned back to the left and missed Norman. It was starting to get dark, so it was time to head home anyway.

I turned the weather on when I got home, and saw that downtown Oklahoma City was in the crosshairs of about 4 of these monster storms that were producing just enormous hail. The storm that I was chasing was coming up from the southwest and there were three more supercells lined up like box cars on a freight train moving in from the northwest. The lead storm in that line produced 5-inch hail near Kingfisher, OK and was still producing 5-inch hail as it moved into the northwest metro.

The storm began pounding the north and northwest sides of Oklahoma City with wind-driven baseball to softball sized hail, which was way worse than the huge hail I saw on April 9th in Woodward (there was very little wind with that storm). Just when you though it couldn’t get any crazier, a tornado was reported near Piedmont, in almost the exact location that the EF-5 tornado hit on May 24, 2011. This tornado was thankfully weak and short lived. Significant hail damage was reported all over Oklahoma City.

Later that night around 10:30 PM, another monster storm took aim at Norman. I battened down the hatches and waited for it to arrive. The storm came ripping through with 65-70 mph winds, but amazingly no hail. It was a wild ride, and the next day had a Moderate Risk up and appeared to be looking even crazier.

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I pulled into Woodward a few minutes after 3:00 and stopped at a truck stop to have one last look at the models. I headed to the east side of town to be in the best position to go east and south to stay ahead of the southeast-moving storms. I waited for less than 10 minutes before the first storm initated just north of Woodward, up near Buffalo. I blasted north on Highway 34 to get into position.

I found a perfect spot to pull over just southeast of the base of a beautiful developing supercell that was slowly moving northeast and had a front row seat to watch the storm mature. I was also watching another rapidly-strengthening storm further to the southwest as well. The cell I was on started to show weak rotation on radar, but couldn’t get its act together much beyond that. I could see a wall cloud trying to form, but it became clear pretty quickly that this storm wasn’t going to produce a tornado right then. The storm then turned southeast and headed straight for me so I turned around and high-tailed it back to Woodward to stay ahead of the rain and hail core of both storms.

I tracked back and forth a couple times between Woodward and Mooreland trying to figure out where the best position would be. Finally it became clear that I needed to get back to the south side of Woodward. Coming back west on US-412 I could see a rotating wall cloud start to put down a tornado right in front of me. It was not very well organized, but did get very close to the ground and was actually scraping the ground on several occasions, but could never fully touch down. It dissipated less than two minutes after forming.

As I came into Woodward, the rotating wall cloud was reorganizing quickly. As I watched the surface air being entrained into the rotating updraft I knew a funnel was imminent. Being the first possible tornado of the year, I quickly became mesmerized by this developing twister and fell into a deep state of tunnel vision, putting myself into perfect position to document the tornado for a northeast-moving storm. Unfortunately, the storm was moving southeast, with the primary hail core headed straight for me.

A light drizzle was falling as I headed through downtown Woodward. As I was waiting at the light to turn south on Highway 34 a hailstone that was easily the size of a baseball fell on the road right in front of me. Then that gut-wrenching felling of “Oh this is gonna be really bad” hit me. In an instant it went from a light drizzle to softballs falling out of the sky. I knew right then and there I would not be coming out of that unscathed. It was like a bad dream watching these softball sized hailstones continue to get bigger. Then the first one hit the bottom of the windshield, putting a large crack across the bottom and snapping me right back into reality.

So I was faced with an interesting dilemma: Huge hail was falling which could easily knock you out cold if you took one off the head and my windshield was beginning to go. Do I try to look for cover, or do I make a run for it? I desperately searched around for a tree, a sign, anything to hide under, but came up empty. That’s right when the hailstone that was easily softball sized hit the bottom corner of the windshield, spiderwebbing the entire driver’s side instantly (the main impact on the windshield was 4.5 inches in diameter and I had dents on the roof bigger than 5 inches in diameter). I didn’t have a choice then. I had to make a run for it, and headed south on Highway 34 as fast as I could.

Driving through baseball and softball sized hail knowing that probably one more direct hit would most likely take out the windshield has to be one of the most unnerving feelings in the world. I was quite amazed at how quickly I punched out of the main hail core and drove out of it as quickly as I had driven into it. The storm quickly went Tornado Warned right after I punched out of the core. I could look over my shoulder and see the tornado on the ground, but it was quite painful knowing that I couldn’t stop to shoot it since the hail core was chasing me down Highway 34. The tornado quickly became rain-wrapped and was on the ground less than a minute, so it would have been gone by the time I stopped anyway.

As I ran south on Highway 34 with the hail core in hot pursuit, lightning started striking all around. My first thought was “Great, I outran the hail, now I’m gonna get struck by lightning.” Keep in mind that this is the wide open Oklahoma prairie and there are no trees or tall objects around anywhere whatsoever. I’m not sure if it was luck or what, but when the lightning did strike right next to me, there was one single tree on the other side of the highway that it struck instead of me. Living in Florida for 6 years did desensitize me from very close lightning strikes, but it was still a pretty good adrenaline rush. It seemed like an eternity, but eventually the lightning stopped coming down and the skies started to get a bit brighter.

I drove all the way to Watonga before I finally stopped to assess the damage. Thankfully, the windshield took the brunt of the damage. The hail knocked my fuel door open, knocked my rear view mirror off the window, knocked my satellite radio antenna off the roof, and left some nice looking dents on the car. It also left a fairly large tree limb in the bed of the truck too. It was a very memorable way to net the first tornado of the year, and the adrenaline rush didn’t wear off until the next day. My windshield is all fixed now and everthing’s all set to resume chasing at the end of the week.

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ZEPHYRHILLS, FL — I was originally targeting an area to the south on Thursday, down in the heart of Sarasota County. That area saw some great storms in the morning, but by afternoon the storms were ripe for pickin’ along the Interstate 4 corridor in Lightning Alley.

At about 2:30 PM, I looked at the radar, and found most of I-4 between Tampa and Orlando was under various Severe Thunderstorm Warnings. I set my eyes on one of those severe-warned cells was in the Brandon area, tracking north/northeast towards the interstate. By the time I got onto I-4, the storm had fallen apart, and the warning had been cancelled. Just as I was feeling the agony of defeat, the radio buzzed, and a new Severe Thunderstorm Warning was issued on a huge cell just to the north. The storm had a well-defined mesocyclone on it, and the northern part of it was dropping pea-to-quarter-sized hail in Hernando County.

I got off of I-4 at Exit 10 and headed north on Mango Rd, where I picked up US-301. Travelling north on 301, I was able to track along right on the Southeastern flank of the impressive storm, but huge trees on the side of the road prevented me from taking any good pictures. The storm was drifting slowly to the northeast, and without any eastbound roads, I soon found myself swallowed up in the edge of the rain core. Once inside the rain core, there were some very impressive lightning strikes pretty close to me, with one striking a radio tower less than a quarter-mile away.

I came into the town of Zephyrhills at the same time as the leading edge of the storm’s core. It was raining so hard you could hardly see, winds gusted in the 40-50 mph range, and several small hailstones fell around the car. I knew I was going to have to punch the core to get back to I-75, so I turned west onto SR-54 and went for it. I did have to battle heavy wind and rain (and saw some pretty flooded yards), but all in all, it was an uneventful and successful core punch.

This storm was so cool because I was able to come up from and pass behind it before tracking NNE along the edge of it and eventually got in front of it. Zephyrhills wound up getting over 4 inches of rain, and I got a couple good photos to take home with me.

Part 2

PASS-A-GRILLE BEACH, FL — As the sun was setting, I noticed that there were some ominous dark clouds to the west. After seeing a few faint flashes in the sky, I grabbed the camera and headed out to the beach. A line of thunderstorms was about 20 miles offshore and headed straight for us. I stood on the beach and took pictures of the storm from about 9:00-9:40 PM and got some great lightning pictures. The setup for lightning pictures could not have been any more textbook. The timing worked out great, too, as my camera ran out of batteries just as it started to rain.

Part 3

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — I ended up not having to leave the house for my final intercept of the night. I awoke around 12:30 AM to the sounds of pine cones hitting the roof. I opened the slider door in the bedroom only to be greeted by 35-45 mph wind gusts, heavy rain, and more lightning. A Special Weather Statement had been posted as strong thunderstorms were pushing through the area. Some of the wind gusts and lightning strikes were impressive (I tried to capture some of it on video), but it didn’t quite live up to the powerful microburst that tore through south St. Pete on April 26th.

We awoke this morning to a threat of tornadoes, but nothing ever came out of it. It was a terrific start to June, and hopefully there will be plenty more of these to come.

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