Tornadic Oklahoma Storm
Date: February 27, 2011
Our Target: Arkansas City, KS
What We Saw: Quarter Size Hail, FOG (Bust)
Trip Miles: 520
One of the best parts about Sunday was, well, it was a Sunday which allowed us to leave when we needed to without worrying about work and everything else that we usually have to.
We left around 11:30 a.m from Ellinwood in thick fog and decided to head East towards McPherson and then shoot South. Our original target was Arkansas City, KS. We stopped to grab a bite to eat in McPherson before realizing the radar was starting to blow up with activity around the Wichita metro area – well at least the only radar that was up anywhere close which was Wichita’s TICH site.
Heading down I-35 the fog finally began to lift right before we got to Wichita and the nickel to quarter size hail began to fall. After we made it through Wichita we were on our way to our original target which was Arkansas City, KS. After sitting in town for a minute we decided to head South and West because some initial storms were beginning to fire. We sat for some time West of Pond Creek, OK watching the southern storm continue to strengthen. Storm motion was incredibly fast moving to the NE so trying to keep up was a challenge in itself. We began to head East out of Pond Creek on highway 60.
About five miles from the Interstate we decided if we were going to keep up with the storm we needed to find a paved North/South road and head North. On our GPS the road appeared to be paved, but it wasn’t. We went about eight miles on the rock/dirt road followed by a few other vehicles and finally caught back up with the cell. About the time we got to Newkirk, OK the storm became tornado-warned. We knew the road network East of Newkirk was horrible but it was our last shot before dark and also before it got out of range.
Heading East out of Newkirk was probably the worst call of the entire chase. On the map below you can see where we took a dirt road North which we shouldn’t have done but we did. The road conditions were horrible the further North we went due to the rain from the storm and at that point it was starting to become too dark to chase plus our options to head NE..well there wasn’t any. We lost all data and cell service from both Sprint and Verizon, add some horrible muddy roads, and it got pretty hairy. As we headed West fog started to really hit us with extremely limited visibility. There were no houses, no buildings, no anything anywhere close for miles. Summing it up, it was unlike anything we’ve saw before. We eventually hit civilization around Silverdale, KS and headed to Ark city and home from there.
