October
4, 1998
Watonga Tornado (Pictures Here)
Chasers-Myself, Gene ChildersWhen I read the outlook, I knew this was going to be the day when I photographed and video-ed my first tornado. I waited until about 3:15 after storms had fired up in far northwest Oklahoma to call my friend, Gene Childers. I said I’m going storm chasing, if you want to go, you have 10 seconds to decide if your coming. He said OK, I did one last look at the satellite picture and I was out the door. We left OKC about 4:00 pm headed northwest on State Hwy 3 to Okarche. We decided to go northwest a ways and then wait and see what happened before we went further. We figured that would put us in the best position to go further north or south. Skies were hazy when we left the city, but before we got to Okarche, clouds had quickly built up in the west. Reports said storms were forming in Blaine, Custer and Dewey counties. From Okarche, we headed north on Hwy 81 to Kingfisher. About five miles out of Okarche, we saw a Channel 9 news crew waiting. We took a farm road west one mile to get a better vantage point of a storm southeast of Watonga coming out of Caddo county. We could see a rain free base with a little lowering but not much else. Another cell was about to overtake us from the southwest so we headed north into Kingfisher and took Hwy 33 west out of Kingfisher about 7 or 8 miles. This was about 5:15 pm. We pulled over to take some pictures of the clouds and lightning. We watched one cell west of us that had some slow rotation move northeast and become a little better organized with a wall cloud and what appeared to be a small funnel. It soon became rain-wrapped and no longer visible to the north of us. We headed back toward Kingfisher and ran into a very heavy cell. We pulled down a county road to wait it out, but as we looked back to the west could see another cell with a wall cloud and a lowering. We headed back west, watching this cell south of Watonga lower and then go back up a couple of times before we spotted a debris cloud on the ground. At this point we were about 12 miles away and headed west. It was about 5:43 pm.We drove another 3-4 miles before pulling over to get some pictures and video as the tornado intensified. We drove another 3-4 miles down Hwy 33 and pulled over again where there were some other storm chasers parked. The tornado crossed the Hwy 33 about 2 miles east of Watonga and about 4 miles west of our location. It continued on an east northeast track for about 20 minutes before finally roping out about ½ north of our location about 6:15 pm. We didn’t notice it until we watched the video but as we were shooting video when it crossed the road, the video showed the very thin rope tornado ripping a piece of asphalt pavement off the road.The area the tornado went across was sparsely populated. Damage was to a vacant house, utility poles, a couple of barns and an irrigation system. No injuries reported. The tornado was described as an F-2 by the NWS and traveled 12 miles on the ground. It started 3 miles SW of Watonga and dissipated about 9 miles ENE of Watonga.