Yesterday was the most frustrating day I've had at the office in a while. I was stuck in Broken Arrow while everyone was out on the first chase of the season. With every model update the sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach got worse. Nearly all of my chaser friends were out on this setup and I was stuck at work. Then initiation occurred. Monday night I looked over models and set a target of Chickasha. What do you know, the first storms of the day went up just west of Chickasha and then the same storm produced a tornado in Edmond, looked crazy headed into Stillwater on radar, then produced another tornado in Pawnee county.
Finally 5:00 rolled around and I hit the road for Bartlesville to intercept the same storm that had been pissing me off all day. I should probably mention that chasing in Bartlesville always adds extra stress to the situation since my family and several friends live there. At times it's nearly impossible to answer phone calls and text messages from those in the area but I gave it my best. On to the chase...Just as I got into Bartlesville, the NWS issued a tornado warning for eastern Osage county and Washington County. About this time, my XM/ThreatNet pulled it's usual crap and stopped working so over to GR3 I went. I headed up to a truck stop about a mile north of Dewey where I rode out the storm. At this point it had gotten dark enough to where I couldn't really see much. After a few minutes I was overran by extremely heavy rain and winds between 40 and 50mph followed by a few minutes of 1/2" to 1" hail.
After sending a few videos up to KTUL, I headed back south to play around in the line of storms coming through the area. The Bartlesville/Dewey area had gotten a ton of rain in a very short time and there were several areas of flash flooding. I spoke with Kelly Baker who was in the downtown Bartlesville area and he was reporting stalled cars and significant flash flooding around Adams Rd. and Keeler.
Finally, I decided to head back to Tulsa. About 10 miles south of Bartlesville I got ran over by a small cell that made driving nearly impossible and had a few pieces of pea sized hail in it. Once that passed the show was pretty much over for me.
Despite not getting anything too exciting, it was great to chase in February. I needed something to clear my mind and I find that chasing does that for me. It's probably due to the fact that I don't have time to think about anything else. I'm looking forward to spring and chasing in the daylight.
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