9/12/08 Reports: KS/MO

[Jim Saueressig]

I was watching the news on the tornadic cells up by KC and happened to notice some rapid development just South of Burlington so I went out hoping for structure shots and managed to get a shot of the building cell that the West end of was going to pass pretty near overhead. It provided a rather neat rotating image do to the "speed?" of the cells in the updraft region as it was passing just East of me. These are @ 18 mm so the area of updraft in the second picture was above 45 degrees up. The first was as it was still South of me.

 

[Darin Brunin]

9/12/08 Reports: KS/MO/LA

I just got back home after seeing a fairly large tornado just south of Eudora, KS a bit ago. Very suprising and I am glad that I took my camera to work with me today(didn't have one other piece of equipment with me...not even a cell phone as it had died). It crossed the road probably a half mile ahead of me and gave me a good shower of corn stalks and leaves as I followed it. The bad part was that I was in heavy rain on the north side of the tornado and it made for some pretty crappy contrast to get decent shots of it but not until it moved a little bit away from me. The contrast was better in person lol and it had some awesome 'wobbling' motion to it as it crossed the road when it was a little more slinder.

Some damage pics...I talked the guy who owns the house in these photos when he was along the side of the road shortly after the tornado passed. His response to me asking about the tornado was "eh...it happens" So I guess he wasn't too concerned about his outbuildings being destroyed. His house seemed fine.

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

Wow Wow Wow! What a great chase day! Had the day off from school and woke up to a 5% in SE KS/S MO. Thought maybe it would be a good day to get a small supercell or something so we decided to chase. We left home at 1pm for a target of Ft. Scott, KS. We arrived around 2:45pm and grabbed something to eat and set up shop. It didn't take long before we saw storms developing to our NW. We finally reached the storms near Garnett, KS and noticed the large wall cloud. We thought we saw a white funnel under the wall cloud near Greeley, KS but we are unsure if it touched down. It went Tor-warned after that and we followed it north as the structure got incredible.

This was taken west of Paola, KS. We got into Spring Hill and the wall cloud moved overhead. We got past a small plaza and a tall column of dirt and debris were looking us in the face. Tornado!! I was in such shock I wasn't able to turn the camera on until we lost it behind the trees. GRRR! This season has been all about that. We got east and watched debris cloud die off as a new area of rotation forced us to move. We finally got in position to see more structure before watching rapid rotation over my high school before heading home and calling it a chase!

Here is a link to the video that turned out low quality for some reason.
http://vimeo.com/1720712

 

[fplowman]

Me and my peeps chased today. We didnt get on the road until 5:30 though. Im afraid all the action on the Eudora, Desoto storms did its thing before we got on them.

Drove to Kill Creek exit off 10 hwy and watched Baron as 2 storms rolled through. I wished I would of caught onto this about 30 - 60 minutes earlier. Although i don't know the exact time of the action. Had my head elsewhere and was caught somewhat off guard. Congrats to those that bagged one. Great view of a nice tornado Darin.

Fred

 

[Brian Stertz]

Got a late start on the Eudora-De Soto KS tornadic supercell to chase it....due in part with not being prepared and work wrap up stuff. Decided to chase the smaller but still strongly rotating storm that moved up from the southern sections of Leawood and Overland Park and closer to me. The first intercept was near StateLine and 435. Very dark low base with a pretty strong central circulation. The second intercept was over by Indepedence Mall. It looked better organized here and just missed the tornado by a few mins. I did get the circulation as it moved across Highway 291 and into the hills and trees east of the road. There was definitely a strong circulation there and did see a ragged lowering (funnel ??) before the rain and trees blocked my view. Certainly a bit of excitement and I really did not pay the weather any attention Friday at all. The rush hour chases are a bit tough though...especially with folks on the road acting squirrelly and panicking. Got home for dinner and to watch the KU game. Local chases are good.

 

[Dick McGowan]

Derek Shaffer and I chased this day as well, intercepting a developing storm near Garnett, where it became supercellular near Greeley, Kansas. We witnessed brief spinups under the cloud bases/wall clouds and debated whether to ditch this storm for the more impressive rotation on the "Eudora tornado storm", but didn't and thought our storm was more isolated...which was a huge mistake.

We ended our chase on US 169 thanks to traffic , near Stanley, Kansas in the heavily populated southern suburbs of Kansas City during traffic hour (southbound was slowed down to about 30 mph), where we we let a cold-looking wall cloud pass right over us...and witnessed a brief spinup form across the highway (which briefly hit my car) before disappearing seconds later (Estimated 60-70 mph winds). Not a bad chase day for September and being gone only 3 hours and home by 6 pm!

Congrats to Darin and everyone else who saw the Eudora tornado!

Photos and full account are here.