The main concern of the warning was severe wind gusts. It looked as though the storm was on the intersection of the dryline and cold front region. Anvil crawler and occasional cloud to ground lightning were observed. Despite the storm moving northeast according to the warnings, it was obvious that the southern part of the anvil and storm system would maintain an easterly component. After some time, we decided to locate further south. Winds were fresh out of the southeast. No problems with windshear; just the moisture.

Finally we located south of Greensburg. The road network did not provide good choices except for gravel roads. The best road option really was the road east of Greensburg. The storms were slowly gathering moisture as it headed further east and base features improved. A shelf cloud and gust front developed. The storm was approaching at a reasonable pace and knowing that we would be facing some fierce straight line winds, we headed further north to the turnoff east to Greensburg. Areas of raised dust were observed and then I looked over to my right and saw what appeared to be dense dust. A better look and I could see rotation. Wow!!! The strong outflow was interacting with the southeast inflow.

Heading east, it was now obvious that there were more gustnado spinups occurring along the inflow and outflow boundary. It turned out to be a gustnado fest with several spin-ups - some more impressive than others. Dust was being blown across the road though most spinups were to our south. Even though the dounbursts were strong, the boundary was moving much slower making it easy to keep up. Chaser vehicles joined from all over and you'd thought you were alone whilst there was no action. We headed south on one occasion for a close-up look but again retreated to the road. Heading further east, we made our way through Pratt and took a detour south of town. This was all great chasing country. A more impressive shelf cloud and gust front had developed with the storm. We gradually zig-zagged our way to Kingman. The storm had moved northeastwards revealing the rest of the activity. I noted the rear flank downdraught of one of the cells to the far northwest. With southeast winds spreading inland, this storm would take off. Once booked in, we checked the Weather Channel but also noted from the NOAA radio that this storm had hail and a tornado warning on it. We observed some inconsistent lightning activity including anvil crawlers. The storm had weakened not longer after passing the Pratt region. We called it a night.

Thursday 16th May 2002 - Sculptured supercell and impressive lightning show, near Canadian and Wheeler, Texas panhandle

This was an unusual setup: it didn't look too ideal in terms of upper level dynamics. But it was still expected to fire as an upper level trough moved across the Panhandle. Needless to say, it was a complicated with the central and eastern Oklahoma region a target because of the upper level jet maxima and more than sufficient moisture and instabilty; the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles made up the other target with deep layer wind shear and sufficient moisture returning. We decided the best action was head south and make the decision there as the events unfolded.

We could see cumulus to the east and south extending inland towards the eastern Oklahoma Panhandle. This was evidence of sufficient moisture returning. We arrived in Alva only to meet other chasers studying the library terminals. John Moore introduced me to his team of chasers and also a couple of other chasers introduced themselves. We remained there a while waiting for activity to develop. Finally, we checked the radar and noticed some cells had taken off in New Mexico. Although they had relatively weak echos, it was reasonable to assume that they would feed on the moisture return as they entered further into the panhandles. A mesoscale discussion was already prepared by the Storm Prediction Center for both targets. CAPE calculations of 5000 were attractive (to the east and southeast) but I still favoured the Panhandle.

We left at the same time as the Kansas chasers and made our move. "Oh Damn, forgot to top up fuel". Nevertheless, we made our way west towards the Panhandle. I knew it was getting low and risky in this region so I had to fuel up at the same time losing the other party. In order to not let them think I desserted them, I decided to go a little faster to catch up. After all, this is Panhandle country. Well...such a great idea that was!! Over the hill came an Oklahoma state trooper vehicle and lights went off. Thank God it turned out to be a warning.

I could see the funny side though... I had lost more time being pulled over than I could have ever gained going after the others. I think he had suspected the car may have been stolen since the car was relativley new with no number plates and just a sticker on the rear window.

The anvil came into view not long after. We continued on towards the turnoff before Forgan. We turned south towards Beaver en route to Canadian. Another storm probably in southwestern Oklahoma or northern Texas exhibited strong updraught explosive pulses.