Day 5: Not so uplifting...

Our morning started with a rush.  I got out of bed, showered, and was in the van within about a half-hour time frame.  We were off to Oklahoma!!  We saw that there was plenty of moisture, the right kind of winds, and hope of some possible lift for storms to form.  The chance was enough that we were willing to take the risk.  After all, we all paid to see storms, right?

When I got into the van in northern Kansas it was cool even with a fleece jacket on.  When we stopped in northern Oklahoma the air was heated up, and we were already starting to burn.  The hourly weather-model outputs still hinted at hope of rising air which would help give birth to form.  Yet, there was no guarantee.

We decided it would be best to head south-west of Oklahoma city... that would be about the place where storms would fire, based on the position of the dryline.  As we drove through the damage by the El Reno tornado that came through on our first day of chasing.  (For more info on this tornado click here. )  On one side of the highway the trees were completely stripped of their bark and smaller branches.  On the other side was a barn that had collapsed.  We were hoping to avoid going through El Reno because we knew there would be damage... but thankfully nothing obstructed us too much.  That's always the heartbreaking thing about storms... even though they are beautiful in their structure and power, they can devastate or even destroy people's lives.

Our final destination was a little town called Chickasha, Oklahoma, where we decided to wait and see if storms would pop up.  We had to get out of the city limits and ended up on some gravel roads, on top of a hill where we could see the sky and look for any clouds beginning to form.  And then we waited.  In the 93 degree sun.

And no storm clouds ever appeared.  Even though we had the moisture and winds for a storm, and there was even potential for tornadoes, the uplifting mechanism that we needed just wasn't there.  In order for our clouds to form we needed that moisture at the surface to rise up into the atmosphere, cool and condense, to form clouds that could produce storms.  And that just never happened.  After about an hour of rechecking conditions, seeing the situation with our own eyes, we realized that no clouds were going to form.  So we started looking ahead for our new destination for tomorrow.

On a side note... apparently chasers from the Weather Channel were in the area today, and had already tweeted that they had given up and headed toward Wichita, KS for tomorrow.  We figured that was also a sign that we needed to accept our busted forecast and just move on.

Back up north we headed for tonight.  In Oklahoma City we ate at a nice Chinese/Vietnamese restaurant, which was a nice switch-up from all the greasy food places we've been eating at.

Tomorrow we may be chasing anywhere from Colorado to Iowa along Interstate 70.  Up in the future we could be looking at Colorado, South Dakota, North Dakota, or even Minnesota as possible chasing areas.