9-10 MAY 2006

We woke up Tuesday morning to what we would have to describe as the promise of 
high helicity, high dewpoint, high CAPE, and a strong enough cap to suppress 
minor convection, allowing only the strongest updrafts to develop.  There was 
also sufficient shear to support supercells.  All things looked rosy, and we 
headed to Ada, OK with high hopes.

When we made our original plan, we knew what we would be getting into, chasing 
in southwest OK.  Trees, hills, lakes, and limited visibility… very unlike the 
glorious open prairie of south central KS, or the OK panhandle.  Still, the 
setup was too tempting to ignore.

Ada was chosen by our forecasters due to the fact that it is in the general 
vicinity that we expected the storms to initiate.  We’ve become quite good at 
sitting and waiting for initiation.  We edit video and pictures, monitor 
weather conditions, catch up on email…. the last update was actually sent while 
we were waiting in a hotel parking lot for the storms to develop.  One of our 
newer members, Mike Sutcliffe, is finding more study time than he ever dreamed 
of in these waiting periods.  Randy Denzer washed the H3, and the rest of us 
did busy work or snoozed thru the afternoon.  

We knew when the storms started that development would be rapid, if not 
explosive, and that was indeed the case.  Shortly after intercepting MESO 
member Chris Rozoff, who was chasing with Lyle Pakula, both from CSU, we took 
off after a rapidly developing storm to our northeast.

The northeast storm showed some promise, but it was headed toward terrain that 
was really unsafe to chase in, due to limited roads and poor visibility.  When 
the cell south of us popped, we were delighted.  Though this cell produced some 
of the most dramatic rotation we’ve seen, it failed to produce much more than 
eye candy, strong surface winds, and some small hail.  We played the storm 
perfectly, however, along the way, we seem to have picked up some tag-alongs to 
our convoy.  Though when asked, we discourage inexperienced chasers falling in 
and trailing along, but as they were there, we sort of kept our eyes on them.

Knowing that our choices were to either get going to Mississippi or find a 
place to hole up for a few days, we chose to take a few well-earned days of R-
and-R in Norman, OK.  We were on our way there when we heard of the deadly 
storms that had fired in Texas.  

So here we sit in Norman, with at least a couple of days of fair weather ahead 
of us.  We took advantage of the spare time to give a MESO presentation to a 
group of High School students that were in the area on a class trip.