October 14, 2007
Southwest Oklahoma
A decent setup in western Oklahoma held potential so I headed west on I-40 towards Elk City to sit and wait. Made the decision to shoot south to Altus and watched as some cumulus started to build and try to punch through the cap.
The storm would quickly grow and eventually become outflow dominated although there was a moment when it had some decent mid-level rotation. We raced south down highway 283 near Blair, OK where we watched the storm progress east. Some nice outflow hit us in town then back off to the east on CR 19 we headed to get back in front of the storm. The outflow was still ahead of us when it spun up some major gustnadoes as we were about to cross.
This 'feature' was reported my many of the news stations and other spotters to be a tornado. There indeed was a tight rotation for a minute or so (can be seen on video) but this gustnado was associated with the outflow part of the thunderstorm. We ended the day with a few sunset shots as the shelf cloud barreled towards us.
Capturethestorm.com Copyright 2008 Sam Dienst