Bad tornado pictures

[Paddletrucker]

So, driving north out of Tulsa Friday night, I found myself driving into the tornado outbreak. My brother was following me in his tractor trailer. We were headed to load in Kansas City. We were listening to the storm spotters on our ham radios since it was getting a little sporty out. We saw some rotation, and were tracking the storm and knew we were going to JUST make it past before it crossed the highway we were on. Looking out our driver's windows, we could see the lowering cloud base and that tell tale "wall cloud" full of rotation. My brother was getting a little nervous already. He'd never been this close to a tornado. I've sat through two in my semi. I still have a patch over a hole in my sleeper from the last one. His nerves didn't improve any when the spotters started yelling confirming a tornado on the ground and the tornado sirens began blaring seconds later. We could see it heading right at us and I decided to depart the area. LOL. We were on a two lane highway in a 55mph zone and headed into a 35mph zone in Nowata, OK, the last town before the Kansas state line. The rain began to POUR as I firewalled the throttle. My brother began hollering at me on the CB that he couldn't see and wanted to try and turn around. I told him, "Where?!? It's a two lane highway! I'm getting the **** out of here. You need to get up on the wheel, find my tail lights and drive!" We did right at 70 all the way trough the town's 35mph zone. I did downshift two gears at the red light to make sure no cars were coming before I ran it. The police didn't seem to mind. My brother yelled at one point that we were going to get tickets. I said that I doubted it, but if we did get tickets, they were going to write mine well north of the storm. Nobody gave us a second look. We drove past sheriffs deputies, local cops, and a highway patrol car headed the other way.

Here's a couple of the rotation and forming tornado



Here's a couple of the tornado, but you can't really see it good. It was rain wrapped and I was driving a 75 foot long 40 ton vehicle on a two lane road with no shoulder doing twice the legal spied limit trying to get some pics on my iPhone. It was a little intense to see this freaking thing a half mile from me bearing down on me.



I think you can see it a bit better here when I turned on the flash


As it crossed the highway behind us, it'd stopped raining and you could clearly see it. It was a whitish gray color. I wanted to get a picture if it then really bad. I thought a picture of a tornado in the mirror of my semi along with my trailer would be pretty boss, but by that time the wind was getting a little ridiculous. I just had my hands too full driving to get it.

Where we were there was NO wind. I noticed a flag lying perfectly still. We didn't hit wind until we were north of the storm and the tornado crossed the road behind is. When we were closest to the tornado, on its east side, in its path, it was perfectly calm.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk