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April 15, 2003 Chase Summary  

Stats
The cold, hard numbers behind this chase.

Date
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Length of Chase
10 hours
Distance Covered
506 miles
...for the year
1,367 miles
Chase Partner(s)
Mike Buban

After the debacle of the last chase, caused by not leaving early enough, Mike and I left Norman before noon with plenty of time to screw things up!  The sky over NW Oklahoma had cleared and was collocated with the best instability and dynamics.  We ended-up north of Slapout (yeah, that far away!) to see linearly organized grungy Cu firing up along the dryline.  The inflow winds were the strongest either of us had ever experienced.  Mesonet sites recorded gusts over 65 MPH!  There were huge tumbleweeds as far as the eye could see...which made for some interesting driving!

Our mode of failure this day was the absence of a nowcaster.  Had we known that the south end of the line, near I-40 and the TX/OK border, had formed into supercells, we never would have driven that far north.  Once we realized our blunder, we plunged south, only to experience stratiform precip for the rest of the chase.  We were twice within 10 miles of reported tornadoes (including the report prompting a warning near Burns Flat), but everything was dust and rain wrapped and moving at 50+ MPH.  It was a rather uneventful chase with hardly any lighting and no hail.  The squall line eventually made its way to Norman around 11:30 PM, just after we got home.

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