We headed to Vinita, OK in the far northeastern part of the state. We sat in a McDonald’s in Vinita for nearly two hours when a cell finally started to look decent, so we decided to go and chase this storm. As we walked out of McDonald’s it was pouring with hail up to quarter size. We didn’t drive father than 20 seconds down the road when we saw the wall cloud that accompanied this storm, it was right on top of us. We immediately pulled over and watched as the storm moved across the road right in front of us. The wall cloud was extremely low to the ground and rotating very rapidly. Accompanied with this rapid rotation was intense vertical motion as well. For several minutes it looked as if this storm was going to produce a tornado, and if it did it would have been within 100 yards of our car. However, the storm moved off to the NE and we followed it. Still looking impressive we stopped once again a few minutes later and witnessed continued intense rotation and lifting with this storm. We continued to follow this storm until we got held up in traffic and could no longer purse it.
While we were sitting in traffic a funnel cloud appeared out of nowhere! The funnel did not last too long and was reported as a tornado, however, we can not confirm ground circulation. We were able to capture part of this funnel on video along with some of the intense rotation that accompanied this storm.
On our way back we heard about the intense wild fires that were occurring all over the state and we decided to go check out the one that was ravaging parts of Midwest City, OK and Choctaw, OK. What we saw was unbelievable. Entire neighborhoods completely burned to the ground, trees on fire everywhere you looked, thousands of acres on fire. Nearly every road was blocked off, however, we found a road that the law enforcement had yet to block off and we took some first hand footage of the fires. This fire started on Thursday during the day and was not completely out until the rain arrived on Saturday night.
What we saw:
Severe Storms – 1
Tor-warned Storms – 1
Tornadoes – 0
