Ok… I’ll get this post going this time… Saturday late morning started with a call from my good friend Greg (meteorologist and programmer). Storms a-brewing in the east and the outlooking is favorable for isolated supercells… or something like that. I’m no meteorologist and my recollection of middle school earth science is practically nonexistent (I had one of those wonderful non-experiences in grade school of studying weather without once looking outside of a textbook), but, like anything natural, I find weather events utterly fascinating. In Oklahoma, how can you not be fascinated by the weather?

Well, perhaps most are not so fascinated to hop into a car and drive three hours to chase a storm, but I find the prospect just to tempting. Greg is a well known and seasoned chaser. He’s cautious and knows where to avoid getting pelted by baseball size hail or driving onto the path of wind sheer, much less a tornado. He’s also good at predicting where the storms might produce hooks and lower level rotations (I just love the lingo). Of course, he’s also human and the weather isn’t. We ended up after a storm that had all the right properties, but not enough to produce an actual tornado. Nonetheless, it was fascinating.

We chased into Arkansas and right up along highway 71 near Winslow. The storms were moving east. As the supercell approached, ground winds shifted west (cool), skies darkened, the we looked up to see scud clouds rotating just north of us (really cool). Later survey showed no damage. About two minutes after the storm passed, tornado sirens went off. Sadly ironic. Somebody wasn’t paying attention. Makes me wonder if those communities with fatalities had timely sirens… or sirens at all.

Disclaimer: two things…one, I’m out with an experienced meteorologist and chaser. I wouldn’t do it any other way (not counting my childhood habit of sitting on the roof when the tornado sirens went off… even Greg would consider that suicidal); and two, I have taken the spotter workshop put on by the Oklahoma Climatological Survey. The workshop is fascinating just to learn something about the tornados, wether or not you decide to barrel down the road after one.
If you have any interest in violent storms, check out the “Storms of 2007” DVD. It actually has footage of my first tornado (even though I’ve lived over 30 years in Oklahoma and spent storm events on the roof of my house). The proceeds are always for a good cause, and the commentary very instructional.