April 14 - Tornado Outbreak

April 14, 2012 was a historic day for stormchasing. This was the last day of the 4-day chasing trip with Verne and Eric Carlson and I. It was the first day I finally got to see a tornado, and will likely be my best chase day for a long time.

Everyone knew this was going to be a big day. The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center gave it a high risk rating the day before, which they said "is only the second time a high risk has been issued for the day two forecast, and the first time ever it has been issued for the initial D2 outlook." High risks are usually issued the day of, and they are extremely rare. I've only chased slight risks and maybe one or two moderates that got downgraded to slight.

Severe weather outlook the morning of 4-14

The morning of the chase, the data said the probability for tornadoes in the high risk area was 45% hatched, meaning at any random point on the map there would almost be a 50/50 chance of having a twister within 25 miles at some point in the day. That's extremely high.

The blue is our path through the day

We started off the day heading up to Smith Center from Russell. The cells were a bit messy, just lots of rain and lighting. At one point we heard a nearby town testing their tornado sirens.
Next we moved east to Beloit in hopes of glimpsing a twister that had been reported on a cell moving that way. Visibility was low with a lot of heavy rain. Following behind two other cars to where the storm would meet us, the other two suddenly pulled over. The Carlson's wondered what they knew that we didn't, when suddenly we got a radar update that looked as though the area of rotation had made a sharp turn straight for us! We back up and paced around a bit and studied the rain to figure out where a twister could be in it. At one point the rain cleared enough to see what supposedly was a tornado. So technically this could be my first tornado, but I wouldn't have recognized it as such and didn't see it long enough to distinguish any rotation.

A rain-wrapped tornado, somewhere in there

Back in Beloit, the flooding was incredible. Because of all the washed out roads we had to turn around several times while trying to make our way south, and eventually went back into town only to find cops staring to barricade the main roads!

Flooding all around Beloit, KS

Finally we escaped and dove down to a new cell near Lyons. It started out as two separate promising storms, but they merged into one. We waited awhile to see if it could recover from the merge. Verne decided to give it one more chance before we would look for another storm, so we turned North to get closer to it. Just over the hill, a tornado came into view. Of course I thought they were pointing at the little satellite on the left, and that big wide thing was just a wall cloud. As we got closer I saw the 'wall cloud' seemed to be touching the ground. And rotating. Now THAT is a tornado.

A monster tornado comes into view

Though I have been stormchasing 10 other times now, the 'chase' part really didn't make much sense until the moment a real tornado came into view. Most of what I've done previously would be more like storm watching and storm following. NOW there was actually something to chase. Tornadoes can move very fast, and this one was definitely moving away from us. Trusting Verne's 30 years of chasing experience, he got us where we needed to be!

That's us, on a mission

The monster cone tornado

At one point we turned around from downed power lines, and eventually got stopped again by trees blocking the road that the twister had just torn up. That was just about the end of our time with this tornado. After that we had some navigation issues on bad dirt roads and fell too far behind. The tornado went a little farther and lifted right at the north edge of Salina. They really dodged a bullet, a lot of chasers compared this tornado to Tuscaloosa and it would have caused the similar damage had it hit town.

Destruction, the Carlson chasers, and the EF4 tornado

The most impressive damage we saw from it was crossing a bridge and riverbed. There was a brown dirt trail it had left through a field, and incredible tree damage and churned earth over the dry river. That's what it was hitting when I took that panoramic photo above, and right where it is in the popular Twistex Sameras video.

One good thing about seeing a tornado this intense is that it didn't cause any injuries. There were plenty of snapped power poles and one house that had some roof and front porch damage. The NWS rated it an EF4 (the scale is 0-5).

Me with the tornado. Yes, it was exciting.

We jumped on the interstate and caught up to the storm again northeast of Salina, just north of Solomon. The traffic jam from stormchasers and gawking locals was incredible. Eventually we somehow got way ahead of the crowd, and were one of the very few cars that got to stop and enjoy the amazing rope-out stage of this tornado.

Local news helicopter flying towards the forming tornado

A classic Kansas twister

This odd-shaped twister held up for just a few minutes

Everyone earned a steak dinner after this day. We met up with Michael Carlson and Eric Haave at Logans Roadhouse and swapped stories and photos before heading back to Russell for the night.

The traffic jam of chasers arrived as soon as it was over

Now the best for last: Here's Eric's video from the day!



4 days, 2,883 miles.
Big thanks to Verne Carlson for bringing Eric and I on this journey!