Lucas Munzlinger Photography

Sunday May 3,2020

I get a invitation to storm chase by Richard Thies to go on a storm chase in SW Kansas SE Oklahoma SW Missouri. I was at my aunt and uncle‘s at the time when I got the invite to go so I called my mom to come and pick me up to take me home to pack up and head north to meet up with Richard. So around 2:30 pm my mom and I meet up with Richard at the Bass Pro Shop in Chesterfield, Missouri I grabbed my stuff put it in his car and Richard and I started heading up I-70 North to Overland Kansas to stay the night at Brian Stertz home for Sunday night and Monday night. So Richard and I got to Overland Park Kansas around 6:15 pm when we got to Brian Stertz place we hung around for a few minutes then we head out to pick up pizza and Five Guys Burger and Fries for me yum!
After picking up the food we head back to Brian Stertz’s place. We talked about past weather events and watched “Bar Rehab” on Paramount Network around 8:00 pm we all hit the hay for the night to rest up for the big day on Monday!

Monday May 4,2020

I woke up around 4:00 am I was definitely excited. To pass time I watched some YouTube videos. At 6:34 am the National Weather Service issued a severe thunderstorm watch until 3:00 pm. Around 6:00 am I checked the “Storm Prediction Center” to see what they were saying in today’s weather event. It does look really good for supercells, isolated tornadoes, and large hail. My goodness that’s a lot for a first plains chase! We head out around 8:15 am to head south to catch a storm that was moving east to Linn Valley, Kansas! The Supercell was beautiful, beautiful structure, very green and ominous. We traveled south on Kansas 69 to a bridge to take cover from hail. The wind from this storm was at least 65-70 mph wind gusts.
After the hail storm was over we got back on Kansas 69 South to Columbus Kansas to wait for storms to form! When we got to Columbus, Kansas we did the “Waiting Game“ for storms to form so I just relaxed laid my head back tried to take a nap. I was too excited to see another storm. Around that time a storm chaser from Michigan, Robbert Forry, met up with us to hang out for awhile. I actually helped him work on his camera to get live view mode to work . I also helped him with his shutter speed so he can get better pictures. After a while I got to meet another very well known storm chaser, Jeff Piotrowsk! I was excited!
We all hung out for about 20 more minutes taking about the next location, which was Owasso, Oklahoma! When we got there we met up with Jeff Piotrowski again in at the QT in Owasso, Oklahoma to plan out where and when the next storm will form after planning where to go next. We started heading north towards the next storm which is Oologah, Oklahoma while we where traveling the storm started to get healthier.
The Storm was definitely getting interesting as it had a beautiful updraft base and it also started to form a wall cloud which weakened after 20 minutes.
The storm started to recycle (reorganized) we meet up with Jeff Piotrowski and we followed him for awhile
We followed him for a few miles so we all can get ahead of the supercell and get a better view and enjoy the storm! We followed him all the way to Claremore, Oklahoma where we a train was blocking a section of road so we had to detour around it.
Once we got around the train we started heading Northeast to get a little bit more ahead of the storm to view the storm and we did the storm was looking more be started to have better structure too.
We headed to Pryor Creek, Oklahoma to hang out with the supercell for a while the storm was really gaining strength it had a nice wall cloud, hail core, and lots of lightning.

My goodness Brian and I nearly got struck by lightning. Yeah that was a close call I could hear the fence and power lines hum from the bolt itself. after the bolt struck I grabbed my cameras and hopped info the car after that we decided to head more east to reposition on the storm.
We ended up in Locust Grove, Oklahoma the super cell is looking healthy, ominous and definitely high precipitation. I can see a lot of chasers pulling over to my left. We were all glad we where the first in line or we could of been in chaser convergence. After watching the storm for 15 minutes it was time to get east. The storm was about to catch up with us. After driving awhile we find a spot to pull over to get a better view of the wall cloud and my goodness it was ominous. We where in the bears cage. Brian and I where a little confident that a tornado was about to form but golf ball size hail had to ruin the party and we had to get back in the car and bail east. That was the end to the storm chase, so we pulled over at a gas station to see what to do next. We all decided to call it a day so we started heading to West Siloam, Oklahoma to eat dinner. After eating dinner we watched a beautiful sunset to end the day!