The events leading up to the traffic Jam in SW OKC on May 31st 2013

[Brandon Clement]

Just trying to piece things together here... (not picking on you at all)

So from your vantage point you were looking back SW at the storm from up on Reuters, right? Were there many behind you on Reuters?

Seems as though it was near the intersection of south radio and reuters that some bad things happened. And it seems they happened because of slow traffic trying to get east. And its seems people were NE to begin with because that position affords a view back into the notch, if I had to guess. (common on HP storm)

I know you aren't picking on me.

We were in the Bear's cage or notch. It is called the Bear's cage for a reason but it is my favorite way to view a storm. At one point I had a brief satellite tornado almost directly behind me. The main tornado was to my west southwest. When we were out of the car shooting the tornado it was to our SW. It had began making the turn almost exactly where we were shooting just west of Hwy 81. When we were pulling up to the intersection there were only a couple cars behind us. This was a tiny dirt road and we try to get away from traffic. There were quite a few cars facing south on Hwy 81 (at the intersection) and unsure what to do when they saw the trooper. At this point it was pretty obvious the tornado was heading NE and made the turn directly towards the intersection. We came to a complete stop and waited briefly to see if the cars on 81 were going to do something since they would have had the right away. Then Eric tried to turn right and go in front of the trooper's car but he pulled up blocking him. I then passed Eric and tried to go behind the trooper. He pulled backwards to block me. Eric had already reversed and was behind me at this point. When the trooper pulled back we both continued east on Reuters. By this time the tornado had closed to about a half mile behind us and was uncomfortably close and it was apparent we were in a really bad situation. It had also grown in size considerably. As I approached the first south road it was gravel and a truck turned on it slowly so I proceeded east. The next intersection I could see about a half dozen taillights stopped ahead and I turned south on South Radio. I was heading down south radio and the clay road with a gravel top went to mostly clay and was damp. My car was handling it ok as long as I was going 25mph or less but that wasn't an option. I got my speed up to about 40mph and the inflow winds were unlike any I've experienced in a tornado. They were literally trying to suck my car into the tornado. At one point a wheel barrow came flying out of the sky and was on a direct path with my windshield but I couldn't slow down. I had good sunglasses on and hoped for the best. Luckily just a couple feet from my windshield it just got sucked straight up and probably hasn't been seen since. Now my car was being sucked towards the tornado so hard that I couldn't steer for a second or two at time and watching things just ahead of me get sucked into the tornado I realized there was no way I could make it another couple blocks to the next road. I took a left onto a dirt driveway and road out the storm in front of a semi cab (no trailer) which was parked next to a metal shop or barn of some sort. I pulled up to the semi and placed my front bumper against the front bumper of the semi. It was facing east and there was a levy of sorts about 3' tall it was backed up to. I had enough space between me and the metal building to feel that the building wasn't going to hit me and knew we were dependent on the semi to not go flying. A freight container then came flying by the north side of the car just rolling and tumbling well over 100mph. The metal building looked as though it evaporated because the metal roof and parts of the walls flew up into the air so fast they disappeared in a matter of a second or two. When the building went it actually helped because the space between the building and the semi was creating a wind tunnel and I was at about a 20 degree angle to the truck. After the building went I lined the car up dead straight with the semi. This is when things got really violent. The semi was rocking like crazy, visibility was down to a few meters and our ears were popping with a noise I never care to hear again. The winds died down very rapidly and we pulled off the semi and drove out the driveway. The house that had been looked pretty rough but not demolished and I don't think anyone was home. We pulled to the drive and I turned the nose of the car into the incoming RFD which had almost no hail but some extremely intense winds (100+ mph). Then went south on south radio and turned east on 15th. On 15th this horse and foal were running down the middle of the road. They stopped in front of my car as if they wanted me to let them in and were clearly freaked out. I wanted to stay on the tornado but it was wrapped up and not visible. Now my goal was to get to hwy 4 and get south across the Canadian river trying to avoid the city as much as possible. When I got into the Mustang area it was a parking lot. I ended up having another scare with a wall spinning like a top move directly overhead. Just before it got there I turned around and headed towards it. I'd rather be facing it with the ability to drive some instead of being parked in traffic. I pulled into a driveway where a guy was standing on the front porch watching. He was very kind and offered us a shelter. The tornado was not on the ground but sure was trying hard to get there. We stood next to the building with the shelter until it passed, we quickly thanked him and proceeded north between two hail cores to get out of the way of the next area of strong rotation tracked over the same area. We came out to 40 just west of where it was shut down and took 40 west. There were about a half dozen semi trucks over turned along with a few cars. There were massive bails of hay, power lines, huge liquid tanks, fencing and a thousands other odd items on the interstate. I didn't see anyone out walking around and it never dawned on me that I was the first on the scene. Just before I got off the interstate back at El Reno a half dozen emergency vehicles came flying east. It didn't even hit me until today that there may have been people trapped and I feel quite guilty for not stopping to help, the guilt will probably hang with me for a while. At this point the stress had gotten to me. I also chase a lot of hurricanes and towards the end of a hurricane after the eye passes there is this stress that comes over most people and all you want to do is get out of the wind, rain and danger. It was a very similar feeling. I just wanted to get out of this mess long enough to catch my breath and wrap my head around things. We stopped at a big mostly vacant shopping center next to the interstate and got out. The adrenaline of the whole situation really made me want to get out and walk around for a minute. We ended up cleaning wheat out of my car which I'm still trying to figure out how it got in there with the windows up but it was everywhere. It was stuck in the windows with half hanging out the car and half hanging in. The only thing I can figure is the winds of the tornado were blowing on the car so hard it actually caused them to bow out and allow all the wheat to get in the small gap. My car still smells like unprocessed wheat and probably will for weeks. Other than a windshield and headlights that look like they were sandblasted the car was in good shape.

Anyway, hope that is detailed enough. I need to get some sleep.

 

[Hannah.Taylor]

I saw this post on facebook, and thought it was relevant to the discussion at hand.

[h=5]From KOKH meteorlogist Jon Slater:

May 31st was a bad day for OKC meteorological community. As great as we did on May 20 we blew it on May 31 IMO.

Turning on the TV tonight only to hear that we scared the people of OKC into running out of their relatively safe houses to take cover in storm drains only to be swept away to their deaths by flash flooding. This is absolutely heart breaking, horrible to hear and hard to take. I'm beside myself with this news. How can this be? You can say what you want but the fact is we did not convey the right information as the storm was heading into OKC. People were so terrified they fled to their deaths for no reason.

The large tornado lifted between El Reno and Yukon so we obviously should have done a much better job of passing that information along to the public. There was NOT a large tornado on the ground as the storm was moving into OKC. The threat was still very real but no need to panic our storm chasers are on it and we only see small tornadoes wrapped in rain hail 70-90 mph winds tracking through OKC. Still a very scary and severe storm but all you had to do was stay home in the normal safe spot and you are fine. Instead kaos and dead people for no reason.

The meteorological community as a whole needs to re-think what just happened. Obviously we didn't convey the right message and report the right accurate information as the storm was moving into Oklahoma county.

Then you add the storm chasers and all the other people that perished...real bad day.[/h]

 

[Jake Orosi]

Well I've learned one thing from this business so far - I will not be actively working HP storms. If it becomes evident on any cell that I wouldn't be able see a tornado from anywhere but inside the inflow notch, then I'm either staying well south and letting it pass or pacing it from down there to see if it loses its HP, or leaving the storm behind altogether without bothering and looking for something better.

It seems to me that it's impossible to do that - to play the "bear cage" - without putting all your safety in the hands of events you can't control, whether it's a state trooper blocking an intersection or an overturned tractor trailer or a clay road or whatever. If you're willing to do that, that's great, but it's not for me.

 

[Mike Hardiman]

Given that it is relatively common for tornado paths to hook to the left (in this case NE), especially when occluding, I would think being to the left of a tornado's "expected" path is an extremely dangerous place to be... regardless of whether or not it is the only place "to get a good view" in an HP environment.

 

[Derek Weston]

Well I've learned one thing from this business so far - I will not be actively working HP storms. If it becomes evident on any cell that I wouldn't be able see a tornado from anywhere but inside the inflow notch, then I'm either staying well south and letting it pass or pacing it from down there to see if it loses its HP, or leaving the storm behind altogether without bothering and looking for something better.

It seems to me that it's impossible to do that - to play the "bear cage" - without putting all your safety in the hands of events you can't control, whether it's a state trooper blocking an intersection or an overturned tractor trailer or a clay road or whatever. If you're willing to do that, that's great, but it's not for me.

I'm with you there. The parameters were clearly there for a violent tornado Friday. HP mode was also predictable enough. Left turn was predictable enough. All those things tell me not to get in the bears cage, not to put myself in possible harms way to look down the notch. I don't chase that way.

I chased it from the south and am happy I did. Live to chase another day. I watched the storm wind up with a great view as it sat west of me. Saw tornado-genesis and amazing structure. I didn't need to see any more.

 

[Mike Hardiman]

View attachment 7714
The sheer volume of chasers is becoming excessive. The realization of this really hit home in mid-April 2012 in Kansas when I witnessed my first real "chaser convoy" of hundreds of vehicles that essentially were hopelessly trying to catch up to storms that were moving NE at 50 mph by "stair-stepping" up N-S oriented roads. Ever since that day I feared being stuck in a line of N-S traffic trying to head south to get ahead of a NE-moving supercell, only to have it turn right.

The attached image was from the same day as the Moore (2013) tornado. I thought this was going to be the day chasers were lost when I saw that nearly solid line of Spotter Network dots on a North-South highway, especially considering that the "dots" reflect but a fraction of actual chasers. Imagine trying to get a whole mess of cars to make sudden U-Turns? What if everyone had to beat it south and there was a 4-way stop sign, or people trying to escape the storm from E-W section roads, unable to turn out into traffic?

Also note that despite all the dots near the core of the storm, there's only a few actual storm reports. To be blunt, anyone that says that their primary goal of being out chasing is to "save lives" by making reports to the NWS is probably full of it. They may make a point to submit reports while in the field, but that is not their raison d'etre. If it were, then the Spotter Network "dots" would be far more widely spaced, nationwide, on any given day.

Case and point -- where were all the "dots" in West Texas yesterday? Where were all the livestream feeds in New Hampshire or Maine? My guess is everyone was hunkering down in the Plains waiting for the next day with the best opportunity to *see tornadoes* which is the goal of most chasers.

Do chasers help by providing ground truth? Yes. But you don't need 500 people on the same storm to provide ground truth.

Unfortunately, the problem with something like volume and congestion is that nobody has any more or less right to be chasing than anyone else, regardless of goals, education, or background. The "problem" can't be down-scaled to the single person, just like no single rain drop can be blamed for a flood. It is dilemma - a problem that has no clear solution.

I had 5/28-31 off from work and could have been in the TX Panhandle or OK any of those days. I seriously considered going to the Amarillo area after work on 5/27, but eventually decided against it, preferring to stay away from hoardes and play with weather and photography in my own backyard. Arguably, chasing around storms in the Big Bend or West(-ish) Texas is more appropriate and educationally valuable considering where I live and work. I have no real connection with the flatlands of the Plains, my career goals do not include those areas, so what more would I really be doing except getting in the way? Arguably, my hail reports to WFO Midland were probably more useful to them than being one of 150 reports of the same tornado would have been to Amarillo or Norman.

 

[Kenny Drake]

The best advice I can give is this:


1. Always leave yourself with multiple solid escape options to the east and south. If one option is questionable (dirt road), then make sure you stay further away. Never 'escape' to the north.
2. Always be south of the storm.
3. Avoid The Bears Cage.
4. Know the environment - both atmospheric and others. Do your research. In this situation, it's Friday evening in OKC about a week after a F5 flattened a good chunk of Moore. People are on edge and may attempt to flee a tornado. This would suggest chaos on the roads if a tornado were to bear down on the area. Parameters prior to initiation suggest HP monsters with planet-sized, skull-shattering hail. Core punch? No way Jose.
5. Avoid tunnel vision. Always keep an eye out for new cells firing downstream. Kearney, NE 5/29/2008 anyone?
6. Follow the rules of the road.

Those are the 6 "rules" I follow when I'm chasing.

 

[JamesCaruso]

I'm with you there. The parameters were clearly there for a violent tornado Friday. HP mode was also predictable enough. Left turn was predictable enough. All those things tell me not to get in the bears cage, not to put myself in possible harms way to look down the notch. I don't chase that way.

I chased it from the south and am happy I did. Live to chase another day. I watched the storm wind up with a great view as it sat west of me. Saw tornado-genesis and amazing structure. I didn't need to see any more.

I was flying home from the Plains that morning - briefly considered changing my flight and staying the extra day - I guess I should be glad I didn't.

Anyway, I did not get to look at any analysis that day. Why was HP the expected mode? I know from reading the SPC outlooks that discrete cells were expected, and I usually interpret that as leaning toward classic or LP, but maybe I am wrong to assume that. HPs can be discrete, but this storm was a huge cluster, not discrete anyway... High dewpoints do not necessarily lead to HP mode, correct? Isn't it more a function of the wind profile? I thought the SPC outlooks alluded to a favorable wind profile...

So I guess I really have three questions - what were the factors creating HP modes that day? When SPC says "discrete" supercells, are they implying LP/classic or not necessarily? And what ingredients resulted in that cluster instead of the discrete storms expected?

Thanks!

 

[Jake Orosi]

3. Avoid The Bears Cage.
4. Know the environment - both atmospheric and others. Do your research. In this situation, it's Friday evening in OKC about a week after a F5 flattened a good chunk of Moore. People are on edge and may attempt to flee a tornado. This would suggest chaos on the roads if a tornado were to bear down on the area. Parameters prior to initiation suggest HP monsters with planet-sized, skull-shattering hail. Core punch? No way Jose.

It's funny you posted this; I was just coming back to post something that occurred to me.

The first time I ever read the terms "bear cage" and "core punch" I think I was around 8 years old; and it was on a storm chasing site on Geocities, during that magical period in the 90's when Geocities (and all other personal) webpages were hideous as a rule, with multicolored text and loud backgrounds and animated "EMAIL ME" and "GUESTBOOK" gifs and the occasional annoying MIDI. Even back in those ancient days, I remember reading an article about "Safe Chasing", and very definitely remember those two rules: AVOID THE BEAR CAGE and DON'T PUNCH THE CORE. This stuff is so fundamental, folks!

 

[Joshua Nall]

This is annoying. There are folks here that don't like to chase and that haven't chased discussing how everyone else should chase. Chasing is dangerous. I thought that was an accepted fact. Chasing in the notch and putting yourself in the likely path of the tornado is more dangerous. Folks that chase in the notch know it's dangerous and they accept the risks.

 

[Joshua Nall]

=Mike Hardiman;330052
I had 5/28-31 off from work and could have been in the TX Panhandle or OK any of those days. I seriously considered going to the Amarillo area after work on 5/27, but eventually decided against it, preferring to stay away from hoardes and play with weather and photography in my own backyard. Arguably, chasing around storms in the Big Bend or West(-ish) Texas is more appropriate and educationally valuable considering where I live and work. I have no real connection with the flatlands of the Plains, my career goals do not include those areas, so what more would I really be doing except getting in the way? Arguably, my hail reports to WFO Midland were probably more useful to them than being one of 150 reports of the same tornado would have been to Amarillo or Norman.

I couldn't get your attachment to work for me. I was on the NM and TX border the 28th. Should have come out. Could have helped me fix my two flat tires. I saw a few other chasers and had an awesome little storm spin around next to me in almost one spot for an hour. Had a great time. I chase for the same reason that I go to the lake. I can't fish in my back yard or ride in my boat in my back yard, or see girls in bikinis. I go to the plains to see awesome storms. Period. I don't understand this need to have some sort of higher reason to chase.

 

[Brandon Clement]

This is annoying. There are folks here that don't like to chase and that haven't chased discussing how everyone else should chase. Chasing is dangerous. I thought that was an accepted fact. Chasing in the notch and putting yourself in the likely path of the tornado is more dangerous. Folks that chase in the notch know it's dangerous and they accept the risks.

Pretty much. The thought of people deserving to die because they played the notch is just silly. We had multiple outlets. Just between the people that were caught in the tornado you have hundreds of years of chase experience yet they can't accept that a handful of things went really wrong. I've played the notch many times before and will continue to do the same. For those of you claiming how safe you chase south of the storm, well storm motion was SE for on the second and third circulation. I've seen chasers to the South almost get overtaken as tornadoes wrapped around the back side of the wall. There is no 100% safe place to chase a tornado. I've also seen vehicles get totaled from massive hail being blown sideways at 70mph in the rear flank. The tornado in my avatar pic is one of those storms that did both. That day I was in the Bears cage and got away with a few dents while others on the south side were being chased by a tornado while getting pelted with sideways softballs. I've also seen and been in the situation where we were south of a tornado and the meso reformed to the SE and been in the path of a tornado. There have also been times when I've been south of a tornado and a cell suddenly blew up to the south pinching me in with bad road networks and was left punching a core to escape.

We had two road options out. The first only existed on maps, it was a road on both google maps and streets and trips 2013 (yes, I use two sources of mapping) as well as the relatively useless maps on the threat net system and and radarscope. I don't trust one map, nor do I go chasing with the risk of being without radar at any point. Our second option was closed off by a Trooper.

Speaking of the Trooper, I spoke with the department of public safety today. The commissioner makes the call to shut down roads. At no point did he call for Hwy 81 to be shut down at any intersection. He did call for the interstate system to be shut down in OKC.

I can't speak for the others that got caught in the tornado but for me it wasn't an issue of being too close to the storm. It wasn't an issue of traffic. It had everything to do with one option not being on a map and second option being illegally blocked. There were some other factors involved but nothing that couldn't have been overcome with relative ease.

For all those giving me lists, here is my safety list.

1) We were chasing with another vehicle. If one broke down we had a way out.
2) We had two people navigating, one in each car and in constant contact with both using multiple current mapping programs.
3) We kept a constant radar feed in at least one vehicle. Most of the time we had a base and velocity radar going in each vehicle with GPS and mapping overlay.
4) The tornado was at least 2 miles away when we decided to reposition and get to the SE flank of the storm.
5) We had multiple roads to get out of the path.
6) We top off on fuel at every chance before the chase begins.
7) We all do extensive forecasting to understand the conditions leading up to the day.
8) We all have at least 10 years of chasing experience.
9) I keep an extensive first aid kit on board at all times.
10) I even go as far as keeping high powered spot lights, hard hats and a short supply of food rations and water in the car in case the chase goes to a search and rescue mode (and it has before).

Even when you do everything the right way all it takes is a negative chain of events to unfold. It is the danger of chasing and one that anyone chasing should have a clear understanding and acceptance before engaging a storm. Enough with the safety lessons, pretty sure we have a few dozen threads on safety already.

This was a unique event and one that needs to be addressed. I think we can all agree that this particularly area is extremely prone to violent tornadoes and it is just a matter of time before it happens again.

 

[Jake Orosi]

This was a unique event and one that needs to be addressed. I think we can all agree that this particularly area is extremely prone to violent tornadoes and it is just a matter of time before it happens again.

Okay, so what exactly are we addressing if we're not supposed to suggest ways things could've been done differently?

 

[Kem Poyner]

.[

[/QUOTE

]]I've seen chasers to the South almost get overtaken as tornadoes wrapped around the back side of the wall. There is no 100% safe place to chase a tornado.[

QUOTE]

I was one who has been jumped by a sneak around tornado. It was at night at the Lela overpass in the Texas Panhandle. Wrecked a new truck.

 

[Brandon Clement]

Okay, so what exactly are we addressing if we're not supposed to suggest ways things could've been done differently?

Traffic, road closures, mixed messages between tv mets and NWS.

Or we could discuss whether the commissioner of the highway patrol should be making the decision to close off entire interstate systems on his own without working with local NWS or county EMC and doing it without advance warning to the public.

We could also discuss whether a cop should be able to cut off major roads with a tornado moving in that direction without much more than a basic weather spotting class that lasts an hour or two.