Amazing and terrifying footage of tornado in KS

GophersInIowa

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Thankfully no one died.

I’m guessing the brighter white you see at the ground is from the drywall in the homes?

 
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Damn. It moves so fast. And still just effortlessly tears through buildings, even though it looks small. Never catch me living in tornado alley.
 

3 students at the U of Oklahoma - in the Meteorology program - were storm- chasing and died after getting in a traffic accident. A friend of mine has a son in that program, but he wasn't out that night.
 



I fail to see what I being learned by this. Seems terribly reckless especially speeding, firing on the wrong side of the road, and running red lights. This video doesn’t seem very scientific more so for clicks.
The screaming “Big Explosion” confirms your diagnosis.
 



There were a number of fascinating things about this storm to me.

It was a classic KS dryline day with high boom/bust potential, and the system was actually limited moisture wise. Due to that this was a very high based, violent, drill bit tornado. The damage path was only about a block wide.

The drone footage is stunning. Tornadoes rarely have a consistent single point of contact with the ground and you can really see it in that footage. Many small, violent vortices, some that appeared well outside of the main tornado until they hit a house or a vehicle.

Also very violent upward motion due to the amount of energy in the atmosphere. Many times you can see the horizontal vortices in the air, but it takes this violent upward motion to tilt those horizontal vortices and create ground contact.

Tomorrow looks like it could be a very similar day, just further south near the OKC area. Peak tornado season in tornado alley is arriving.
 

I love tornado videos as much as the next guy, but it's amazing how reckless storm chasers have gotten, even after the death of the three in El Reno. Driving in the debris field and underneath power lines which are being knocked down 150 yards in front of you. At this point your a 2x4 away from being decapitated.

I agree that it's getting dangerous and a lot of them feel like they are above the law. But the thing is, cops are spotters and first responders so it's not like a chaser is going to be pulled over and cited when there is a tornado roaring by. The number of people doing legit science work is probably less than 50, but there are hundreds of people out there.

Reed is a great chaser, however yes, he's just as much about this brand. He screams just to hear himself scream.

Unfortunately, storm chaser deaths will continue to rise, if only due to the sheer number of people out chasing. Here is a screen grab from a radar app I use when the storms were starting to fire off on Friday. Each red dot is a chaser, and it's only the ones who have registered with a particular spotter website. So the actual number of chasers (including amateurs) is probably at least 2-3 times this. Tomorrow there will probably be even more.

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I love tornado videos as much as the next guy, but it's amazing how reckless storm chasers have gotten, even after the death of the three in El Reno. Driving in the debris field and underneath power lines which are being knocked down 150 yards in front of you. At this point your a 2x4 away from being decapitated.

I agree that it's getting dangerous and a lot of them feel like they are above the law. But the thing is, cops are spotters and first responders so it's not like a chaser is going to be pulled over and cited when there is a tornado roaring by. The number of people doing legit science work is probably less than 50, but there are hundreds of people out there.

Reed is a great chaser, however yes, he's just as much about this brand. He screams just to hear himself scream.

Unfortunately, storm chaser deaths will continue to rise, if only due to the sheer number of people out chasing. Here is a screen grab from a radar app I use when the storms were starting to fire off on Friday. Each red dot is a chaser, and it's only the ones who have registered with a particular spotter website. So the actual number of chasers (including amateurs) is probably at least 2-3 times this. Tomorrow there will probably be even more.

View attachment 18339

It's unfortunate to see some of the reckless driving that occurs, but that's almost always going to happen. It's hard in the moment when the adrenaline is flowing and there are typically very few cars around, and only one path to keep up where you may have to cut a corner or two. Ben Holcomb was very close in his video but he was always behind the tornado. He wasn't going to take a projectile 2x4 in that position.

Chaser convergence has been an issue for 15+ years now, basically since mobile internet became easily accessible. The Twistex crew that died was a combination of collecting data and being far too close to a large tornado that you knew could become large very quickly from afar. It was a high risk day and a deadly miscalculation on their part.

The only chasers I know that have died due to reckless driving was the Kelley Williamson crash a few years back. The chasers that died on Friday was just on the drive back home in the rain where they hydroplaned. Their chase was over at that point and it's sad and unfortunate outcome. Driving and other drivers is by far the most dangerous aspect of chasing tornadoes, not the tornado itself. It is actually extremely difficult to be run over by a tornado.
 


In case you didn’t see or hear the big explosion let me tell big explosion too.
It was on my 🪣 list to go on a storm chasing ride/adventure at some point, but with that many crazies out there, I’m now content to watch from the safe confines of the internet; sometimes getting older doesn’t sux.
🤣
 








as I type this, the National Weather service is viewing storm damage to determine whether there was a tornado touch-down about 15 or 20 miles from my house. A line of storms rolled through SW MN Weds night. the local airport reportedly measured a wind gust at 76mph shortly after 6pm.

this is the same line of storms that caused the damage noted in the previous post. that part of I-90 would be about 30-35 miles from my location.

no apparent damage at my house - not even any tree limbs down. I live on the East side of town and the storm tracked to the North and West.

apparently there is another chance of severe weather tonight in the area.
 

as I type this, the National Weather service is viewing storm damage to determine whether there was a tornado touch-down about 15 or 20 miles from my house. A line of storms rolled through SW MN Weds night. the local airport reportedly measured a wind gust at 76mph shortly after 6pm.

this is the same line of storms that caused the damage noted in the previous post. that part of I-90 would be about 30-35 miles from my location.

no apparent damage at my house - not even any tree limbs down. I live on the East side of town and the storm tracked to the North and West.

apparently there is another chance of severe weather tonight in the area.

Good luck down there. Be safe and don't chase.
 

as I type this, the National Weather service is viewing storm damage to determine whether there was a tornado touch-down about 15 or 20 miles from my house. A line of storms rolled through SW MN Weds night. the local airport reportedly measured a wind gust at 76mph shortly after 6pm.

this is the same line of storms that caused the damage noted in the previous post. that part of I-90 would be about 30-35 miles from my location.

no apparent damage at my house - not even any tree limbs down. I live on the East side of town and the storm tracked to the North and West.

apparently there is another chance of severe weather tonight in the area.
My sister and family live in Alexandria and they got hit hard this evening. Looks to be straight line winds. Most of the trees in their yard are partially or completely down. The house directly behind them is missing their roof. Others houses in the neighborhood with lots of damage too. My parents live on a lake about 15 miles from there and they don’t know where their boat is. The lift is upside down in the water. Boat’s either at the bottom of the lake or floating somewhere around the lake.
 

My sister and family live in Alexandria and they got hit hard this evening. Looks to be straight line winds. Most of the trees in their yard are partially or completely down. The house directly behind them is missing their roof. Others houses in the neighborhood with lots of damage too. My parents live on a lake about 15 miles from there and they don’t know where their boat is. The lift is upside down in the water. Boat’s either at the bottom of the lake or floating somewhere around the lake.
Those storms around 6pm were absolutely flying from south to north. It was amazing how fast they went from Worthington to St. Cloud and then Duluth all in 3 hours maybe a little more.
 

the NWS confirmed that a tornado did touch down in Storden, which is about 20 miles from my house. Took out a grain elevator and did some other damage to some structures and farm sites.

Sioux Falls, SD got hit pretty hard. lots of trees down, some power lines and poles down.

as to Parking Lot's point, I was watching KARE 11 (trying to watch Law and Order) and they were doing a lot of weather updates. the point their people made was that the heat in the Twin Cities created a 'heat island' that essentially blocked the storm system from moving into the Metro area.

The heavy stuff all went West and North of the Twin Cities - lot of reports in Stearns County in the St. Cloud area.
 

My sister and family live in Alexandria and they got hit hard this evening. Looks to be straight line winds. Most of the trees in their yard are partially or completely down. The house directly behind them is missing their roof. Others houses in the neighborhood with lots of damage too. My parents live on a lake about 15 miles from there and they don’t know where their boat is. The lift is upside down in the water. Boat’s either at the bottom of the lake or floating somewhere around the lake.
Parents found their boat this morning along with two others on the other side of the lake.

The pictures in Alexandria in my sister's neighborhood are devastating. Their neighbor has 4 kids. The house will have to be leveled and rebuilt.
 

Another round of tornados in the Alexandria area. Apparently a very large one has been confirmed on the east side of the town. Only a few miles from where my sister and neighbors got hit a few weeks ago.
 

Cool video from probable tornado last night near St Paul.

 




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