A CRAZY WEATHER DAY
April 15th, 2016 proved to be a wild weather day in the Oklahoma Panhandle. Several tornadoes came to life in the Four Corners-Eva area of western Texas County. The storm itself had come out of Texas.
Luckily, I was able to get away and go look for some photogenic storms on this day. It was not long until radar showed that there was some decent storm action around Dalhart, Texas. I really was not interested in going down there, but ended up heading out of Stratford back into Oklahoma. I usually shy away from storm locations with a lot of people. Too many times, the Internet will be flooded with hundreds of images of the same storm. For me, I want something unique.
After a quick break in Boise City, I headed off west towards Clayton. Just a few miles into this next leg, I received an alert of a tornado waring in Texas. At this point, we were straight north of that storm. After a few seconds, I decided to head further west. There were storms brewing in New Mexico that looked good on the radar. They were moving south to north. In that area, that means a possible opportunity or two in the Kenton area.
I stopped in Felt, Oklahoma for a few minutes and then we headed north, paralleling the storm that had come out of Clayton and was heading northeast. It was not long until some serious cloud structure became visible and I was able to pull off the side of the road to start shooting. It was nice as it was just me and my son on this storm and we spent probably a good 30 minutes watching and shooting until it finally started to disappear.
After returning to Boise City, I soon learned of the tornadoes that had struck in Texas County. While I had a bit of regret missing them, all I had to do was check RadarScope to see the long line of red dots that was chasing that storm. There was a chaser who managed to get some captures of the storm I went after, but we did not have the crowds to deal with.
