Day 1: Chasing Planes, and a Couple Storms

There is absolutely no work or business-related text message ANYONE wants to get at 2AM. Especially when that message informs you that your flight was delayed by 2 hours, and that you will miss your connecting flight due to the resulting delay. Your flight you were waking up for in two hours.

So began the saga of my 14-hour-airport day.

Instead of flying the sensible Tampa-Houston-OKC route, my only option was to be transferred on an unlikely vector through Chicago, bumped from first class (no refund) and delayed by five hours. My route was the airline equivalent of a Rube Goldberg machine.

Whoever invented this in-flight telemetry thing is my person. I was probably the only one on board watching mainly to see where the LCL and freezing layers were, though.

But was it ordained?

Just as with my NOLA/Austin drive (I discuss that in my previous post) I again felt the weather wanted me to get closer by some trick of fate. Less than an hour after my flight was re-routed, a Severe Thunderstorm Watch was posted for southern Iowa and northwest Illinois. Our flight would have to avoid the Mesoscale Convective System on its way to OKC.

If the severe turbulence on our 60-seat plane was any evidence, our pilot did a less-than-stellar job of doing that. At least I got some cool pictures in between trying not to squeal.

It's hard to see, but that's an impressive cumulonimbus anvil rising in the background ahead of a scattered (and much lower altitude) cumulus deck. Around this time the plane was shaking like a cold chihuahua.

After encountering two of my fellow chasers at the airport by chance, we met the rest of the group and gathered at our hotel. Our first day of chasing is tomorrow, likely to West Texas where we'll likely see some big hail... and with any luck, a tornado or two!

An overshooting top is visible near the wing's edge, probably 50 miles away. This complex of storms was being warned for severe thunderstorms at the time, and an overshooting top is indicative of a powerful updraft (and strong storm)