After driving all the way to Ama from Norman, we went back to Shamrock and then turned around again to head back for the storm over Caprock Canyons/ Silverton area. I had my doubts about making to that storm on time. Not only did we get there in time, we got some great seats for the multivortex as it really got going and as it morphed into many different shapes next to the highway as it moved along. West of Hedley we experienced baseball size hail, it was kinda soft hail. It would shatter real easy and didnt leave many dents, and small dents at that. Cracked my headlight case though. It wasnt till after it was north Hedley in Donley County that this storm really went to work. Along highway 273, we saw a funnel come down around the back edge of the meso. As it came around, it reshaped into a large bowl and came down in the valley next to us. The whole valley just looked like it exploded as the dust went flying into the air. The roar of this tornado was incredible. As it began to track north toward Mclean we could see it when lightning would illuminate it couple miles in front of us off the highway maybe a mile. Alot of chasers were moving directly next to this thing. It became a very wide and short stovepipe. Thankfully this thing lifted just before Mclean and the I-40 region. We were getting really worried because it had a bullseye on McLean.
Another large tornado followed soon after. It touch down on the far SE edge of McLean causing a power flash that knocked out the Mclean's power. At this point we were just trying to stay behind the storm as safely as possible. We took highway 453 through Pakan east of McLean. Saw a couple other possible large tornadoes backlight by the crazy lightning, one of which was near Kellerville. These storms were lit up much better than the SE KS storms on Feb 28, but the road networks just were not good enough to risk staying with this storm especially seeing the size of tornadoes they were putting out. The animals were going crazy in this area. We about ran into a big group of deer and a crazy raccoon before making it back to the interstate to head home.
I will never forget this chase. I went from seeing no funnels, let alone any tornadoes, over the past 2 years to having a tornado count somewhere around 15 just through March on just 4 chases (3 very successful ones).
Here is where I drove on this day. (Not actual GPS track, I went back and drew in our general path taken.)
Here are pictures from throughout the day, starting at Caprock Canyons up to McLean.
