James Siler
EF3
This day started off with me being on the fence about even going out or not. I had been watching observations for a better part of the day while getting some house work done that I had been seriously needing to make a dent in. I seen storms firing on radar in NW Texas around Childress around 2:30 to 3pm but nothing that I was impressed with. After doing an internal fight with my self about them I decided to go ahead and head out right at about 4pm.. I was originally going to head SW but based on the storms motions I ended up heading west on I-40. Once I got to Elk City i gassed up and decided to take a look at radar. Once I seen the radar I knew I needed to get south. Shortly after getting out of Elk City it went tornado warned. I booked it down highway 6 out of Elk City, trying to drive as fast as I thought I could with out getting a ticket. Upon getting into Altus I made the decision to go ahead and head south down to Elmer and then head west from there since the storm was moving almost due east. I made it to Elmer and headed west on Elmer road. My plan was to take Elmer Rd all the way to Eldorado since it was the only road that crosses the Salt Fork River south of Altus. So i'm booking it along Elmer rd when after 2 to 3 miles west of the river it no longer is paved. You can tell it used to be paved but isn't any more. Look's like they recently chipped it up but now it is mostly gravel and dirt. At that point I decided to pull over and observe the storm. I have had some less than pleasurable experiences with mud on past chases so it was a big part of my hesitation. I most likely would have been fine but I didn't want to chance it. So I pulled over and observed the storm for about 45 minutes before I decided to head back east. I received a call from my good friend and chase partner Marcus Diaz, telling me to ditch the storm I was on and get across the red. He told me it was crapping out which it was, really fast, so I booked it across the red on 283 then navigated farm to market road 91 to Chillicothe and started to head west on 287 towards Quanah Tx. By this time the sun had set it and was pretty dark at this point. After making a quick stop at the rest area to use the rest room I headed on only to turn around just on the east side of Quanah and headed back to the east rest area. Radar looked like it showed the storms starting to gust out and I really didn't want to get cored. Also not chasing much in that area I wasn't comfortable trying to watch the sky and the road and my maps all at the same time. After chatting with Diaz again I decided to bail which was a good call cause the storms were starting to weaken. I missed the reported rope tornado but I wasn't upset one bit about this chase. I got some really good shots and just got to sit there and enjoy the storm with not to many other chasers around. All in all this will be one of my more memorable chases. Thanks to Diaz for the nowcasting assistance.
