May 9, 2003
We were on the storm that would go onto produce all the nighttime OKC area tornadoes early in its life, out by Cordell, OK. We were doing 60mph when, as we came over a hill, our asphalt road tuned into slime. Susan Walling was driving, and did a helluva job not killing us, as she steered through three fishtails, wagging back and forth, and got us down to about 40mph as we finally careened off into the ditch, getting up onto two wheels briefly before settling back down on all fours. We had so much momentum that we ended up back on the road, but stuck. Floss Ralston and Bob "Dad" Schafer were behind us, and suffered the same fate (except they didn't almost crash, but said ours looked spectacular from their view).
So, it took us exactly one hour and fourteen minutes to free both vehicles (by sheer manpower) but we finally got ourselves back onto the paved road. We had a small roadside celebration of our triumph over tragedy, and all seemed well in the Universe. Then Tom Tackett (our good friend and loyal nowcaster) called to say the storm was looking tornadic heading towards the OKC metro. We got back on the road headed home, hearing live play-by-play of the tornadoes we were missing. One of the worst days of my chase career.
A few years later I heard a rumor got started that we'd crashed and were killed.