Today would end up being an incredible
chase day, one of my most memorable. We were targeting south central
Kansas today and made a stop in Dodge City to find an internet
connection so that we could check data. The sky was blue with
no sign of what was to come later that afternoon. Eventually,
towering cumulus clouds started to form and the first thunderstorms
formed. The one storm that we were interested in kept splitting
with the left split dying off and the right split continuing to
grow. It took on incredible structure and even had a nice rainbow at one point.
The first tornado formed near
the town of Medicine lodge. It had a nice, slender cone shape with
a debris cloud at the ground. This tornado held on long enough
for me to get out and shoot tripoded video as well as still pictures
before it finally roped out and dissipated. As we continued east,
another tornado formed. This one lasted less than a minute and
consisted of only a small nub of a funnel but it was clearly in contact with the ground
due to the presence of a large amount of debris being kicked up.
Hail quickly started to become
a great concern for us as the vehicle started to get pounded by
golfball size stones which then became baseballs with the occasional
softball thrown into the mix. Finding shelter in the town of Attica
became an immediate priority, otherwise the van would've been
pulverized. A carport in someone's driveway did the trick except
that it was only high enough to protect the van, not the extra
antennas that we had on the roof. Oh well, sometimes sacrifices
need to be made and my large cellular phone antenna took the brunt
of the impact as we squeezed under the shelter. By now, the tornado
sirens in town were blaring so loud that I could barely hear myself
think and I had to scream in order for anyone to hear me at all.
We collected up a few of the largest hailstones which were about
4 1/2 inches in diameter.
As we were examining the hail,
we spotted a large cone shaped tornado forming on
the east side of town. At first I thought we were in a safe position
because it was east of us and the storm itself was moving east.
After a few moments of viewing, it became clear that this tornado
was not moving away from us...It was headed towards us!! Sometimes
a tornado will circle around the backside of the main area of
rotation in a supercell thunderstorm and head back against the
main motion of the storm. We had to get out of there NOW.
We piled into the van and pulled
out of the carport, ripping the last remains of my antenna to
shreds in the process, and blasted back to the main road where
we got an incredible up close view of this beast. The tornado had a beautiful white cone shape
and it had picked up an incredible amount of red dirt. It was
moving north-northwest and it had already struck a house on the
other side of town doing F-2 damage. Small pieces of insulation
were falling out of the sky at our location as the tornado started
to weaken
less than a half mile ahead of us. After it lifted, we continued
east and had to take backwards due to roadblock near the damage
path. The storm was still very strong but it was getting dark
and the visibility was poor. I've had a few close encounters with
tornadoes after dark and I wasn't interested in repeating one
of those experiences.
A second supercell storm had
formed and was tracking along a path right behind the first one.
This storm had some incredible lightning in it and we stopped
to take some pictures. While we were concentrating on the lightning,
we noticed yet another tornado in the distance off to our north. This one was
only visible when it was backlit by lightning flashes but it was
big and appeared to be doing a lot of damage near the town of
Harper. We watched it for close to 20 minutes as it churned away.
We found out later that this tornado was doing F4 damage at the
time. A tornado that strong, especially at night is incredibly
dangerous.
Here's a panoramic photo of
the night time Harper Tornado
