April 26, 1991....I was only 17 years old at the time and had deep passion for anything and everything weather related. I was still in High School kinda, and although I was very athletic, playing basketball, soccer and other sports, I of course thought that I was going to b the next Michael Jordan but the weather had other ideas. Little did I know that this day would be the introduction for me into the weather world and the world of storm chasing. I can't recall of knowing or even seeing any other chasers before this day...I simply did not know they exsisted. How naive of me right?
I remember waking up the morning of the 26th with hopes of that I had actually done well during an interview with the manager of the local Kentucky Fried Chicken the evening before. I was well prepaired....I wore tan slacks with my "penny loafers" and a very nice (allbeit LOUD) hawaiian button up shirt. Looking back, I suspect I looked like a 17 year old tourists but at the time The word cool was Lanny Dean and I knew it. I might mention that my mornings actually started sometime around noon or even 2pm as I suspect most lazy teenagers who knew everything about everything would if given the chance. If I recall correctly I think it was well after 2pm or even closer to 3pm.
Just prior to this event I had been dating a young girl by the name of Holly Chapman, actually living with her and her family, Dan, Barb, Angel and Ginger Chapman. I was attending a private Christian school in Springfield Missouri where Holly also went to school. Fact of the matter is that I started going there due in part to dating her...at the time she was my world and as a young teenager, I went where she was. In todays world I guess you could say that she was my first love. Of course, we were young and mistakes happen for many different reasons most of which were simply becuase of our age and becuase of my living situation. Close to the end of the school year Holly and I broke up, as you can imagine this was pretty tough on me so in all of my wisdom I decided that I needed to be away from Holly and so I quit school and moved back in with my Mom and Dad in Oklahoma. On April 17 I became an Oklahoman again with the thought that I could just forget Holly exsisted with my decision.
One stipulation that my Mom threw out on the table when I moved back in with them was that I either had to go to school or get a job. My thought process at the time was that a job would be much better than going back to school as I knew everything there was to know about everything anyways so why waste my time any longer sitting in boring classrooms. I just knew that if I got a job I could get rich off of min. wage and could really focus my attention on the weather after I got rich.
After taking a shower and laying around for a bit contiplating how I was going to get rich, there I was.... sitting at the kitchen table pondering a phone call to the local Kentucky Fried Chicken while eating a bowl of cheap Capton Crunch. I wanted to see how my interview went when I heard one of the local TV stations mention the possibility of very severe weather later in the day. Of course this peaked my interest much more than a phone call would and so I decided to
"tune into" what the guy on TV was saying. The "guy" kept mentioning that there was a real possibility of severe weather and tornadoes that day and that people should go over their saftey plans. It was at this point that I knew what my day was going to consist of....I was going to go see a tornado simple as that.
My Mom and Dad lived close to Wesport, Oklahoma right on Lake Keystone at the time in a small 2 bedroom mobile home. We actually lived just to the east of Westport about 2 1/4 miles in a nice little mobile home park. It was a very clean park and certainly not what you would think of when you think about living in a trailer park. Mom and Dad were renting the mobile home while waiting on the house they were buying to get finished being remodeled. I decided to go fill up my car with gas and as I went out the front door and stepped out onto our wooden deck I remember the air feeling very "sticky". It was one humid SOB outside! I made my way dow to the station and filled up my car with gas and then headed back to the house to see what else was going on with the weather and to attempt to call KFC to check on the status of their need for a full time cook during the day shift. Not long after I got home I heard the news that "they" had issued a tornado watch until late that evening and out the door I went. I first drove south down HWY 48 to HWY 51 and then drove west not really knowing what to do or what I would see or even what to expect. I pretty much drove to what I thought would be the center of the tornado watch box or where I invisioned the center would be. After driving and stopping and driving and stopping and driving some more, I made my way to Stillwater and close to Interstate 35 when I finally saw it.....a big monsterous storm cell to the north and west of my location. I could not see any tornado or even any real structure in the low levels but I knew this was a beast and one hell of a storm. It looked like it was moving to the east so I decided to back track a little. I ened up going north on HWY 77 and then stopped at the intersection of HWY 77 and some dirt road that did not have a name. It was here that I saw my first "storm chaser"...a small guy with dark hair and glasses. He was pointing north at the direction of the storm when I saw it......it was almost white in color and had a true funnel shape to it. I could not tell at that time if it was touching the ground or not and to me I did not think it was but the "storm chaser" kept screaming "tornado, tornado, tornado on the ground"
I was able to get the big VHS camcoder that I had "borrowed" from Mom and Dads closet and started to film the tornado when all of a sudden the "storm chaser" drives off screaming that it was headed right for us. My vantage point was south east of the tornado and to me it looked like the tornado was moving away from me not toward me. so I decided to stay and shoot some more video. The tornado made some drastic color changes and went from a white color to a darker grey white and then to a almost blue grey color. During one of the color changes I started feeling winds hit me in the back and made it difficult to film steady. This wind kept getting stronger and stronger and which lead me to feel a little unsafe at my position and caused me to move back to the east. I drove to the intersection of HWY 15 and whatever dirt road I was on and then went south on highway 177. I finally stopped just north of some lake and got out to film the tornado again. As soon as I got out of the car the wind was so strong it made it hard to close my car door. The tornado had changed size and color and was now a big giant black tornado that was very wide.At the time I did not know what the term wedge tornado was or meant but in looking back this was a giant wedge tornado!
The tornado was loud and was making a loud roaring, hissing type sound. There were clouds pulling into it from my direction that were getting wrapped up and sucked into the top part of the tornado I remember thinking that it was going to cross the HWY not far from where I was just located at and I actually remember thinking that it would be cool to be back up there. At that point I remember seeing black stuff flying around the outer edge close to the tornado and I remember thinking that "those birds are very close".....I realized that I was not seeing birds....it was trees and all sorts of debris floating around the base of the tornado.
Not long after this I couldn't make out the tornado very clearly anymore and so I basically drove south to 412 and drove home. I had not been home long when discussing my daily duties with my Mom and Dad were cut short with another tornado warning and this time it looked to be heading straight for us! Anybody who chases knows what can happen to a mobile home during a high wind evebt much less a tornado....they don't stand a chance but back then telling people to leave their mobile home to go out into the weather and find shelter just didn't seem right. We were no exception.....
I remember our power flickering off and on....we were all glued into the TV set watching Travis Myers on one channel and Jim Giles on the other telling people "near Westport to take shelter". Our power went out and it went completely black.....
As we sat in the darkness, my Mom yelled at me to get closer to her and Dad and we grouped as close together as we could in the middle of the living room floor. The first thing we heard was the wind pick up....it started blowing really hard as we could hear the wind blowing through the leaves of the trees.....knowing what I know now, I suspect we were just on the outside and to the south of the main core becuase we did not receive any hail and very little rain. Anybody who knows weather however knows that this is not a good location and we were in a very dangeorus place.
As the wind roared louder we just sat there....a very stuid decision that could have very well cost us out lives.
As it turned out the roar that we heard was also coming from the tornado that hit Westport just a little over 2 miles away. After the wind died down Dad and I went outside to survey the damage.....we had tree limbs down and insulation all over our yard, boards from God only knew where, one broken window on my Mom and Dads car from a big tree limb that had crashed through it and our skirting around the mobile home was nowhere to be found. At this point we decided to call it a night and we all went to bed not long after becuase we no doubt had a long days cleanup ahead of us in the morning.....
After going to bed I remember laying awake remembering the days event and being afraid that we might have more severe weather and that without TV we wouldn't have any warning of it coming....I did not sleep well....I don't think any of us did.
Daylight showed the true damage of the event and as we cleaned up our yard we were informed by a friend that Westport had been hit really bad so we decided to drive over and take a look.
It was was the first time I had seen damage up close and it really hit home especially for some of the folks that lived up on the "ridge" in Westport....their houses were totally gone with only some of the inside walls remaining....it was so sureal and an event that I will never forget.
Not long after I decided to go back to school and moved back to Missouri. I graduated that year and went on to college with the hopes of doing something in the weather. I ended up getting my degree in Electronic Telecommunications and later went to work full time in the media reporting and shooting the weather. I was the first in house "storm chaser" in the state of Kansas to film and report a tornado live on air in June of 2005. I was awarded Storm Chaser of the year award through Ipixcel in 2005 and 2007 and was Emmy nominated for my weather reporting in 2008. I have filmed 297 tornadoes in the last 20 years, took part in a docudrama show called Tornado Hunters which aired on TruTV and participated in 4 Storm Stories for The Weather Channel and I feel I owe it all to April 26, 1991 and my decision to chase rather than to check in with the folks over at Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Currently I own and run Extreme Chase Tours which is a storm chasing tour business along with my business partner, Jeff Smith and Chad Berryhill. We have got a wonderful team of people including Mr. Jim Sellars, Jill Gilardi, Brian Depriest, JD, Steward and a few others. These people are my friends and family. Speaking of family, I am happliy married to my wife Laura and share 2 children with her, Brandon and Rylie who are twins. We also have my three children from my previous marrage as well as her two children from a previous marrage.
I have often said that after I see 300 tornadoes I will stop chasing....I just may do that! Please forgive my grammer as it is late/early
