ENID, OK - Hey BuzzHeads! I knocked off another Bucket List item on Thursday, May 18, 2017 when I finally caught up with several tornadoes and captured some film footage. These storms and tornadoes were located near Seiling and Chester, Oklahoma.
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To quickly define who I was with I'll say there are normally three kinds of folks following tornadoes. The first category are storm spotters. These folks are trained and volunteer for the county and state. They are called out by Emergency Management to specific locations and report back what they observe.
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The second group are tornado chasers. These folks load up with cameras and just start chasing storms based on what they see online. Many of these people are not trained and try to get as close as they can get to the tornado. Their main purpose is to get footage they can sell or to have a thrill.
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The third group of people, which is the group I was with, are also trained and work for news stations or TV channels. These folks are out tracking storms so they can report the exact locations back to the meteorologists at the station. They are trying to get footage but their main concern is to alert the public of on coming storms, hail and tornadoes.
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On Thursday, May 18, 2017 I was able to ride along with KFOR Storm Tracker Mike Bennett from Enid. Mike tracks storms for Channel 4 and has a storm chasing truck with all of the storm warning bells and whistles. We left Enid around 11:00am and returned around 9:30pm after a full day of tracking the storms.
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Below are the photos and video I took while on the ride. I've always loved weather and that combined with reporting on a tornado outbreak made for a bucket list day. I may add more photos and remarks soon.
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The sky looked blue filled with puffy clouds. You could feel the moisture in the air which is what they call soup. That cloud in the middle started exploding upward and in a matter of minutes became a thunderstorm. There were at least half a dozen of these popping up all around us.
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It didn't take lone for the storm to lower and form a wall cloud.
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Once the wall cloud was formed you could see the storm begin to rotate.
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Once the storm was rotating it began to spawn several different tornadoes.
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Once the tornado gained strength it dropped to the ground and began moving across the landscape.
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This is a great photo! You can see the tornado out the front window and at the same time you can see it on radar where the "hook" is and you can also see exactly where we were which is the circle in the middle of the red box.
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The scariest part of tornado tracking are the amateur tornado chasers. At one point there was a line about three miles long filled with tornado chasers and that includes tornado touring vans filled with people. There were dozens of license plates from out of state.
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YouTube edited footage from the May 18 tornadoes near Chester, Oklahoma.
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Facebook Live Video from down around Seiling and Chester, Oklahoma.
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Tracking Oklahoma Tornadoes - 1 Year Ago
