I’m so sick of this freaking mud – May 24, 2008

I left from Great Bend, Kansas this morning at 6:30 am in order to pick up a rental SUV in Yukon, Oklahoma that was to be called home for two arriving guests and ITV cameraman (Chris Terrill). The plan was to get a little rest, meet Chris, load the SUV and pick up Lorraine and Gareth in the evening.  Seemed simple enough, until I noticed that we had been included in a Tornado Watch. So much for the needed nap.  I couldn’t argue against something pretty good happening based largely on the mesonet plot and degree of instability.  I held off just a bit longer before the Tornado Warning was issued which included the county that I live in.  In a mad dash, I threw what I thought I would need in the truck and started north on highway 81.  Making it through Hennessey by way of dirt roads, I was able to see one of the final set of early cones that occurred west of Highway 81.  I continued to work my way north on roads that were not the best in the world, but seemed to be doing fine without recent rain.  They still had that feel that they had been moistened up the night before, but managed to kick up dust as I drove.  So all is well I thought.

I turned east from Highway 81 about 1.5 miles south of Bison.  The road was paved and all was good to keep me in position for the next tornado event.  At least for a mile.  I was a little worried about the road changing to dirt, but much like the others, little recent rain made it fine to travel down.  I pulled down to a nice oil lease road and watched.  About the time things started to look interesting to my east, I heard the sound of the rain coming.  It only lasted a couple of minutes and wasn’t very heavy, but the damage was done.  My road had become an ice rink.  I tried several attempts at getting out of the valley I was in, only to finally end up in the same spot I was about 48 hours earlier.  Once again, I was walking, ankle deep, carrying my shoes up a bunch of slop they used to call a road.  I was lucky that my crap AT&T service actually let me call Hank Baker who was only 1.5 miles from me at Highway 81 where I started.  Telling him I was stuck, he said he would be right there and would pull me out.  I repeated several times “DON’T COME DOWN HERE!”  He tried anyway only to stop about 50 yards in, use full 4 wheel drive and reverse, and barely managed to get himself out.  You have no idea some of the things that were going through my head as I once again made that walk.  I would stop about every 50 feet or so and turn around to see the nice cone tornado that had formed about the time of my incident.  It took 28 years to get stuck the first time, and two days for it to happen again.  I could barely walk up this hill, carrying gear would have made it worse.  So, all was left in the car.  I jumped in with Hank at the top of the hill and the chase was back on.
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This time without any type of camera at all and riding shotgun.  We got to watch a beautiful evolution of a very large tornado between Douglas and Marshall.  Then shifted east of I-35 where we watched a couple of solid tornadoes occur at the same time we believe somewhere near Orlando.  To the defense of being useless, it was quite amusing and somewhat soothing to watch the others around me stress out, cuss and fumble with various tripods/cameras and vidcams.  The decision was made easier for me since all of my stuff was sitting in a ditch about 25 miles to the west.  I kicked back and watched and repeated several times – serenity now.  In all, I ended up with five tornadoes on the day.  First time ever for me to land tornadoes on 3 consecutive days, but I paid the price to do it.  Despite a good scrubbing in one of the greatest showers ever, if I looked close, I could tell the difference between black Kansas dirt and red Oklahoma dirt under my toenails.

Alvin (the tow truck driver) was able to get our SUV out of the ditch the following morning, only to find out that it wasn’t big enough for our upcoming trip anyway.  It went right back to Enterprise Rental – with a bit more mud than it had when I picked it up – and was replaced with a 12 passenger van.  Thanks to Hank for throwing me a lifeline, thanks to Bill Wasinger for the airport pickup in my absence, and thanks to Alvin for the quick work with the tow.

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