Storms That Have Been Chased: Continuation Day 2 May 19th 2010 Oklahoma

Slowly waking up from a short sleeping period, May 19th 2010 was in store for big things. The forecast models resembled a beautiful westward tilted stacked low pressure system drawing in plenty of moisture for the state of Oklahoma. The boundary setup west to east parallel to I-40 early in the afternoon, would bring a promising severe weather outbreak.
With the intention of chasing with Brad Duncan, he would be busy for the afternoon which put me solo once again for today's setup. I liked initiation to begin in between Clinton & Weatherford, OK.

The cumulus field is always pleasing to the eye knowing moisture was in place and all was needed was the dryline to get one of these exploding. Sitting around Weatherford, the first supercell of the day to dominate most of the afternoon would begin just NNE of Elk City and Clinton.


I began driving north of Weatherford to get a better view of the now tornado warned supercell, but I wanted to chase in the south where later would be more development near I-35 starting near Chickasha. This was my target forecast.
I knew the area up north was just as prominate for tornadic development, but I also knew the entire spotter network population would be chasing this first supercell of the day. I watched as it looked to have what I thought gone HP and producing a nice shelf cloud.
The minute I got back on the road to go south back to I-40 to head SE, I saw a multitude of chasers driving north to intercept this tornado producing supercell. It is at this point, I become bitter and sweet. Something wasn't settling well with me for the first time I realized that there were more chasers than I could ever imagine. I was here, but I was just there. Passion and love for chasing got turned off. I kept driving south hopefully to catch a developing supercell in my target with the hopes there would not be a gazillion chasers.

I reached El Reno and began working my way south towards Chickasha. I parked out in the plains dirt road on highway 152 to wait.

I sat there, and realized my feeling of being out here were for the wrong intentions. I really wanted to see a tornado since 50 million chasers just scored on tornadoes up on the north cell. I kept focus and just enjoyed
the hot humid air of Oklahoma. Towers were shooting up southern Oklahoma moving northeast towards Oklahoma City. I shot down south to got on the SE side of developing cell #2.



There was rapid motion in the base above as in the background a clear slot gathering up the falling rain and began wrapping up the energy developing a mini meso with a wall cloud. I watched this for a little while in Chickasha waiting to get back on it as it would continue to move NE towards I-35.


At this point, I hadn't seen a large crowd of chasers until I started getting on the storms tail I was consumed by thousands of vehicles all trying to punch through the blinding RFD that was beginning to form. I was dissappointed cause I got behind and wasn't going to drive blindly just to get east of the cell.



I became very bitter and just fell apart at the end of this chase. Physically, emotionally, and spiritually I reached a moment I don't ever want to experience again. This chase ended and I went straight to get some Sonic.
I parked out in a field to watch the sunset illuminate the cells firing parallel I-35putting rest to this chase.
I would say that I learned a lot about myself in my career of chasing storms.






Reports:
None