We left at 11:30am and headed to Seiling, OK. Around 11am the SPC issued a High Risk area for most of Western OK and parts of central OK. Several showers and weak t-storms fired in the TX panhandle and western OK in the morning due to the strong convection and moved out of the area by noon. Behind these storms a few discrete cells started to form around 12pm, local time, and we headed west to Vici, OK to intercept a rapidly developing storm. While sitting in Vici the storm went tor-warned and was heading right for us. We moved about 2 miles to the east of Vici so as to not get hit directly by the core. By the time the storm arrived the tornado (if there even was one) was completely rain wrapped. We watched an intense area of rotation surrounded by heavy rain/hail pass about 4 miles to our south west and then pass right over the town of Vici.
There were two storms right behind this one that were also tor-warned but since we were chasing for KSBI we had to stay on the one we were on. With a poor road network in this part of OK we were not able to immediately catch back up to our storm, and by the time we did it was quickly dying out. While trying to catch back up to this storm we passed through the town of Waynoka, OK and there was a lot of flooding in this area. I was driving through water that nearly came over my tires several times.
Of course, the storm directly behind this one produced the only tornado in all of Oklahoma on this day. Throughout the state there were several reports of extremely large hail, upwards of 4 inches, and only 1 tornado report. This was quite a bust considering there was a high risk for this part of OK along with a PDS (Particularly Dangerous Situation). All in all we drove 550 miles in 12.5 hours.
What we saw:
Severe Storms – 4
Tor-warned Storms – 2
Tornadoes – 0 (a possible rain wrapped tornado)
