Amazing Mammatus
Back home people will probably be waking up to news of events in Moore, Oklahoma and the, at current count, 51 deaths that occurred there. I’m a little bit shellshocked by it to be honest. You get so focussed on your own storm during a chase, you don’t really realise what has happened elsewhere. We didn’t realise what had happened until we got to our hotel room in Denton, Texas.
This is the other side to storm chasing. On the one hand, it is chasers and spotters who are able to get the early warning reports in, but I can’t help but feel a bit unclean that I have chosen to chase something as a vacation that is actively destroying people’s lives. Its a world away from the romanticised view of a photogenic funnel ploughing across a cornfield.
Three is an irony that, as a chaser, armed to the teeth with radar reports and up to date forecasts I am probably one of the safest people in tornado alley, as I know at all times where not to be. It is a luxury that the poor people in the path of the storms don’t have. My thoughts go out to them tonight, my mind is not in a great place right now
Peace
Some rotation near Ryan, Oklahoma. This was about 80 miles Southwest of the moster cell that decimated Moore. We got pretty close to this couplet at one point but couldn’t see anything at the time due to rain
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