featuring Connor Mockett
Hello, everyone! Welcome back to another Life with Connor the Weatherman column. This is yet another continuation of the Tornado Alley Chasecation stories, with this one being the May 22nd and 23rd days. I left off the last column at the end of our Iowa chase, so I’ll continue from there.
At the end of the chase in Iowa on May 21st, we originally thought we weren’t chasing on May 22nd. However, the amount of days left in the vacation were dwindling down, storms were happening in Texas on the 22nd, and we’re there to chase. So we drove deep into the night to Wichita, Kansas, and got a suite at a small hotel that had 4 beds. The only problem is that we got there at 3:30am, but had to be back on the road by 6:30am in order to make the Texas storm in time.
We got back on the road at around 6:45am, slightly late, but that’s understandable because we were all exhausted from getting to the hotel in Nebraska at 4:30am the day before. Back onto the I-35 southbound we went, headed for Texas around Abilene. We really did give it our best shot to make it in time for the storms, but the system was further south than originally thought, and we couldn’t make it in time. We stopped near the Oklahoma/Texas border and called it quits. We went to Altus, Oklahoma, got a super awesome motel with the team, and relaxed for the rest of the day.
That night, we looked at the models for May 23rd. A classic dryline storm day in Oklahoma was in the cards for that day, and we were in perfect position in the southwest corner of Oklahoma in Altus. Supercells were expected to fire in the Texas panhandle and move east into southwest Oklahoma late in the afternoon and into the evening. We sat in Wellington, Texas for our target area, and the first two storms ended up firing 5 minutes down the road. Perfect target. What happens next ends up being the greatest day of my storm chasing life.
After two storms initially fired up, the one to the north died, leaving only one single supercell for everyone to see. It was tossing hail the size of tennis balls, the structure was amazing, and it was so windy it was creating some moments where visibility on the ground was very low due to dust getting kicked up. Our chase team ended up dropping to the south to a Red River crossing so we didn’t get stuck somewhere without a crossing, and during that time the storm matured even more. We got eyes on it again, without dust in the way, near Olustee, Oklahoma. What we drove up on when we turned the corner of the road is a scene that will be etched in my brain for my entire life. A massive tornado was on the ground right in front of us, under this massive and beautiful supercell.
The tornado was moving quite slow, so we were able to sit on the side of the road and watch the tornado come closer to us, without being in any danger at all. So many photos, so much video, of this massive tornado under this crazy cool looking supercell. A moment every chaser around that storm will remember for the rest of their life. Truly unforgettable.
The first tornado we saw dissipated, and then a second monster tornado came down from the storm shortly after. This one started smaller, and widened so fast I almost couldn’t believe what I saw. I was in a chase vehicle with Alberta storm chaser Braydon Morriseau, and we ended up getting really close to this one, probably about a half kilometer. You could just hear the power in that tornado, ripping up the ground it was on. It ended up occluding to the north and getting wrapped in rain, and dying off shortly after that happened. As the precipitation wrapped around the tornado, softball size hail stones were falling from the sky as we drove down a very muddy dirt road, one of them cracking Braydon’s windshield to the point where water was dripping through.
Those two tornadoes were the only ones that storm produced, and the storm then began to die about an hour later. We ended the chase just past dark on a dirt road, chatting about what we’d witnessed about an hour or two before. Supper was had at Applebees in Altus, Oklahoma, photos were shared, videos published, and many stories were told. For the whole team, it was one of the best tornadoes of everyone’s career. The next big chase day came on May 25th, and that story will come in the next column. Thanks for reading!
