May 5, 2001

May 5, 2001-After a dismal start to this spring chase season, finally got a chance to go out on a chase. I got off work at 11:00AM and quickly went home to get ready for the chase. After looking at outlooks and getting everything together, me and my wife departed Ft. Smith at 11:30 and headed to Lawton, OK to meet up with some freinds from channel 6 from Tulsa. We took I-40 to OKC and I-44 to Lawton where we met up with our freinds at 4:00PM at a local library, where we gathered the latest info. After looking at a number of models, we decided to push west towards Altus on Highway 62 and wait for something to fire up. We stopped on the outskirts of Altus for a pit stop and to look around a little bit. After hearing that the dryline was still around the OK/TX border, we decided to push further west on 62. We pulled off on a county road just east of Duke, OK to wait and hope for something to fire. After seeing a few towers flare up and die down, we thought that our day was going to be a bust. Around 6:30, we noticed another flare up to our NW, however this looked to sustain better than the others. We watched for about 10-15 minutes as it slowly grew. It was taking it's time showing any kind of organization and we decided to follow it as it pushed NE around 20mph. We went north on Highway 34 towards Mangum and stopped once before reaching Mangum to shoot some photos as the storm was still maintaining itself. The storm was still showing some promise as we passed north of Mangum. We decided to turn east on a county road about 9 miles north of Mangum. After travelling east a few miles we pulled over for a great photo oppurtunity. While watching the storm, we noticed some weak circulation on the SW part of it. We called channel 6 out of Tulsa for a radar check and was told that another storm was rapidly developing to our SW. We were at the point of having to make a decision at this point as we were in between the two storms and in the path of the one to our SW. While thinking we were letting the one to our NE get ahead of us(mistake). We decided to take a chance at the one to our SW. As we were pushing east we noticed a meso forming and a well defined circulation on the SW part of the storm. While coming up to 6 we got word that the storm to our SW was showing signs of rotation and heard that the storm towards our NE was showing signs of weakening. Our thought was that the storm to our SW was now the one to chase. We pushed east on Highway 6 until we came up on Highway 44 and went south on 44. While heading south on 44 we got slammed with heavy rain and small hail. We came to the intersection of 44 and 9 and went west on 9 until we hit 44 again. We drove south on 44 and stopped for another photo break. At this time we heard about our first storm forming a rotating wall cloud and dropping funnels around the Cordell area. At this time we all wanted to kick ourselves in the butt. Before the sun set, we decided to chase another storm that developed SW of storm #2 and travelled back up 44 until we hit 9 going east. As we were nearing Hobart the storm died and that ended our chase day. A trip worth taking and lesson learned from it. Just like my chase on March 26 of last year, never leave the storm that you are chasing first. All in all the trip covered about 800 miles and was a long drive back home. Pics will be posted as soon as I have time to get them up.