Dan Robinson
EF5
Well, I suppose it's my turn to get chewed out by the chase community. I was seconds away from being hit by a tornado that suddenly appeared out of the rain and maxed out on Highway 54 south of Cooperton, Oklahoma. I escaped in reverse, nearly colliding with a car doing a k-turn that also was not visible in the screaming rain-filled inflow jet until I was upon him**. To my credit, this was all not intentional. The storm's visual appearance suggested outflow dominance, with no low-level inflow. The storm did not have a radar-apparent circulation prior, and had none for the previous 20 minutes. The tornado was west of where one would have expected. I had called off the chase and was heading north toward OKC to get a hotel. I waited for the VIL spike to cross the highway and proceeded north, and bam. Earlier, I saw at least 2-3 other tornadoes inside the notch of the HP just east of Blair.
**EDIT: It turns out the guy I almost hit wasn't doing a k-turn, he was southbound and suddenly turned 90 degrees across the road right after he passed me, directly in my path, to view the tornado. That's why I didn't see him. I don't think he realized I was backing up. I didn't know what happened until I was able to look at the video from my rear-facing camera. The entire incident from my 2 dashcams (front/back) and camcorder is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0UAoFnfSj8
Some more screen grabs:
http://stormhighway.com/blog2012/april1312a.shtml
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