Welcome to Chasestories.com from Robert Satkus

 

April 17, 1986
 

 

Overall conditions were similar to the April 3 event, with a stronger cap, so a squall line seemed unlikely. Dewpoints weren't what they could have been, leaving instability a bit weak. Our target area was southwest Ok, so Troy Knight, Fred Ikard, Earl Weissert and myself piled in the big LTD and headed towards Anadarko and beyond. We saw a few towers near Anadarko but they quickly fell apart due to the weak instability and stronger cap. We passed through Nowhere Oklahoma and Fred took us on a tour of the Cyril area, where he is from. As we drifted further southwest, we could see an anvil to our distant southwest. We stopped at Hobart around 5pm to get a TV update. The anvil was approaching, and we even got a few raindrops in the clear air, indicating extremely strong winds aloft. Fred found a store with a TV and got a radar update, with the storm to our southwest increasing with " tornadoes likely". As the storm were moving quite fast, we stopped at Roosevelt to let meet it there. With strong SSE winds gusting to near 40mph, we threw rocks at signs, bottles and each other as we waited. Unfortunately the storm rapidly dissipated before it got to us, leaving only an orphan anvil. A carload of disgruntled youth headed home after that. Instability wasn't strong enough to overcome the cap and strong shear. Only isolated severe weather occurred across the plains, with several funnels and baseball hail in Kansas. Our storm briefly became severe around Vernon TX. with 1.00" hail reported there.