Background:

Part of this trip was I had to deliver some materials to a Tufco Head office in Gentry, Arkansas. Heck, I got 3 days of hotels and all my gas to and from Arkansas covered so this was definitely to my advantage to detour to deliver it. It just so happened that our preliminary target was about 75 miles to the west so this was a bonus. We got to Gentry around 12 pm and I made the deliver. The big boss (president) was nice enough to let me use their computers  to find out where we were chasing that day.

SPC had the area under a moderate risk but the terrain sucked. Tons of trees and hills and no visibility in the target area. Oh well, we would do the best we could and hopefully get lucky. I gave a call to George and Ron and they were about an hour behind us and we would try to hook up.

We had varying target locations for the day so I was pretty sure that we would not see them. Chasing is as much about making your own targets and hoping that you are right. You just never know with the weather.

Chase:

We headed along 412 and saw this power plant making clouds and then north along 69 highway to Pryor.

Storms had started to go up around us around 3 pm. I gave a call to Dave Drummond, a texas chaser I knew and he said that we should head south as the storms are looking better south of 412.

So we swung over to Salina and south on 82 sightseeing through the Oklahoma hills.  About 5:30, a tornado warning went out for Cherokee County. We were entering in Tahlequah at the time so we were in the right region as the cell was at Pumkin Center heading towards Cookson.

Off we took towards Cookson. The visibility sucked and trying to see anything was harder than forecasting the weather. We just crossed Tenkiller Ferry Lake when we came upon the storm. It was showing a nice lowering and a brief wall cloud at the time but the visibility was so poor that it was hard to even get a decent shot of it. I met up with a tv chaser from Tulsa around Caney Ridge who said that the storm had produced a very weak tornado about 10 mins before. Dang. We were so close but the trees had prevented us from seeing anything.  We stuck around as the wall cloud became more developed again but it quickly died out. I bid the chaser good bye and headed south and tried to figure out where we were going to stay the night. We got back to the intersection of 82/100 when we were hit with another severe storm that dropped quarter size hail and intense flooding.

After this cell moved on, the local fire department (2 guys in an old firetruck) pulled up and said how the tornado about 30 mins ago happened right beside them. They said it formed, moved the portable outhouse along the ground sliding for 50 feet and then pulled up and dissipated. I told them it must have been a pretty crappy tornado if it could not even take the porta-potty. They laughed and off they went.

We travelled around the lake and took some nice pictures before deciding where we were going to stay.

We ended up in Muskogee, Ok for the night and it looked like an off day tomorrow which would be nice after the long 3 days of driving.

All Photos and information unless otherwise noted are copyrighted 2003 by Dave Patrick & Kristy Randall.  Any use other than authorized by me is against the law.  If you wish to contact me regarding use of these photos, please e-mail me. Images unaltered digitally (except where stated)