An Amazing Storm Chase

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Kathleen and I had an amazing storm chase today.

The first part of the chase was rather frustrating with many small funnel clouds (at the left side of the lowered cloud base known as a "wall cloud").

However, things got more serious as the storm approached Interstate 70 west of Salina. I saw a tornado about 5 miles north of the highway (MM 232) at 735pm (no photo, I was driving).

We got off I-70 and went north on Brockville Road and saw a multi-vortex tornado rapidly develop.

It rapidly widened and increased in intensity as it moved northeast.

The video below shows the very rapid rotation in the wall cloud and the tornado which appears as a black smudge under the right side of the wall cloud. Click on the arrow.

My friend, Reed Timmer, of AccuWeather, got the tornado at the same time from a different angle. Again, the tornado is the black "smudge."

Here is a spectacular closeup about this same time. Unfortunately, the tornado was doing damage.

You might wonder, why do this? For one thing, to warn people. I sent many tweets in real time used by AccuWeather, the media, the NWS and my Twitter followers ( @usweatherexpert ).

The other is to see the beauty of the Kansas sky. I'll do a posting with some of the great cloud photography we got today when I have time.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, will be another day with tornadoes in the Great Plains. I'll post on that in the morning.

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