Nature's own fireworks

Wednesday was bonfire night and as it is obviously not celebrated in America it was set to be rather a dull evening. However, there were storm alerts out the night before and on checking again in the morning we decided to go chasing in the afternoon in the hope yet again that we were going to see a tornado, which unforetunately we did not.

We did however see some of the chase trucks from various new channels so we can't have been far off from the action. We ended up setting off back home but getting caught in ahail storm which we stopped for to take cover. The hail stones were quite large, bigger than garden peas by a long way which was very cool and you could see how how it had built up layers and layers of ice around it when it started as a small stone. Also we got caught in A LOT of rain and when driving the car we went though quite a large amount of water which splashed up in a wall and just hit the wind screen. It was long after that we pulled in.

All the chasers on the move as different storms strengthen

Some of the really big hail that fell on us

The video shows the size of the hail, the noise it made, and some very excited met students.

We got back to the weather centre a little ahead of a storm that was heading to Norman from Edmond and went up to the observatory and were treated to hours of endless thunder and lightening which eventually passed over us dropping floods of water and more large hail storms. There were flashes of all colours as we saw the lightening hit several transformers in the city but it was fantastic to see and made up for not being able to have a bonfire and fireworks.

The thunderstorm view from the Observation Deck in the National weather centre, Norman