Apr 17, 2013
Initially, this seemed like a great idea. The only question was whether the eerily consistent-with-itself gas with the boundary in southern Kansas was correct, or if the eerily consistent-with-itself nam with the warm front in southern Oklahoma was right. It was going to be a good setup.
My first impression was that we would go to southwestern Oklahoma on the dry line.
Al and I left Memphis at 5am with the general notion of going to western Oklahoma and fine-tuning from there. We were happy to see no nocturnal convection anywhere in the southern plains. The front was around the Red River in the early morning.
A few storms popped up along and behind the front, a couple of counties west of Oklahoma City. We could see they were elevated by their swift drift to the north-northeast. So we had a leisurely lunch at the Flying J on the west side of the city. We decided on southwestern Oklahoma, a decision forced by the front being south of the Kansas border by a very long shot.
What would become a highlight of the day was our trip south on US81. We had crossed the front on I-40W, going from the mid-70s to the upper 40s. When we reached the warm air again on 81, all of the windows fogged over, and stayed that way. We were wowed by the science of it all, and then realized we were hurtling down the highway with no visibility.
We survived to reach the turnpike at Chickasha and continued southwestward to Lawton. We should have stayed there, but did not. Storms were developing across the Red River and in the panhandle. We waited for them north of the river, around Frederick. We saw a classic rfd cut but no apparent rotation. There were svr warnings for the storms as they approached Lawton but we were concerned that the rain-cooled air to the north would kill them. So a tornado hit the Goodyear plant near Lawton.
I'm not heart-broken over this. To this point I have not seen one photograph of a tornado from this day. What did bug me was that I gave up on the storm coming up from northwestern Texas about a half-hour before sunset. After an afternoon of grayness and fog I was done. So this storm probably produced tornadoes north of the river east of Frederick. No pictures from this one either, but still, you want to see this stuff after a drive from hell. A couple of tornadoes near Harrold, TX were also confirmed by Marty Lisius. During the (daylight) hours that the storms were busiest, they never really looked good on radar. The reflectivity's were elongated east-west. Visually, the folks up north near Lawton reported that the storms looked mushy. We had seen plenty of dust and a few storm bases, but only one cell from the mid-levels upward.
I thought we would spend the night in Oklahoma but Al had other ideas. It was his turn to drive so I rested my eyes for awhile. We kept blowing by exits with lots of motels, through the hard rainfall. Finally by eastern Oklahoma I had figured out that Al intended to head back to Tennessee. I did not care either way, overwhelmed by fresh disgust and disappointment of having been burned by my laziness.
I awoke to strobing blue lights near Fort Smith. We think since the bars in Arkansas close at 2am, it was a dui stop. Al got a warning for 74 in a 70. Petty stuff. We hit Memphis around 7am; a 26-hour drive for not one picture.