Blowing it during big outbreaks

[Mike Bennett]

Greensburg,KS

For me it was the Greensburg storm I missed. I was on this storm when it developed and tracked through Harper Co. in NW Ok. While it was in OK, I was not real impressed with it. If my memory serves, it had a little weak rotation in the upper levels but I wasn't real confident in it as I thought it had more than enough time to spin while it was in OK, if it was going to. Since I chase for a TV station, I felt I should let it go as it was leaving our viewing area. Other storms were developing in the eastern TX panhandle, so I bailed on this storm and dropped south to cover the new storms. (I felt a sense of responsibility.) Anyway, the Harper Co. storm became a monster storm as soon as it crossed the stateline into KS and went on to produce the Greensburg tornado. I have mixed emotions about seeing or not seeing that tornado. On one hand I know I missed an historic tornado, on the other hand I think a lot of chasers who chased that storm felt some uncomfortable emotions because of the number of deaths and devastation it caused. I have a friend in OK who's daughter, son-in-law and grandkids survived the Greensburg tornado but lost everything they own.

 

[Brandon Goforth]

For me the most aggravating was May 10 last year because I saw 2 really nice tornadoes, one of them being the Yanush, OK wedge which was spectacular in itself, and I got NO pics because I was trying not to die in the jungle mess hell called eastern Oklahoma.

 

[Glenn Dixon]

In retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised that I only got 2 pics back out of that roll, from earlier in the day in Kansas. The tornado occurred to our east at ~1830CT with sunset less than an hour away... in using 1/125 shutter speed, I may as well have been taking pics of my floorboard. But on October 5, 1998, that didn't matter... I was furious at myself after getting those pics back.

Today, I think of that day as one where a good decision to blast south resulted in success... and no pics to show for it!

I had a similar (although rookie) experience on the Guthrie, OK tornado in 1998. I pulled up behind Blair Kooistra and Steve Miller-TX, grabbed my camera and tripod, ran across the road and set up. I took one picture of the funnel while there was a debris cloud below it and ... nothing, end of roll! I yelled at no one in particular, took the camera off the tripod, and ran back across the road to the car. I unscrewed the leather case (which was preventing a light leak), popped the back of the camera open and squealed like a little girl. I forgot to rewind the film! I snapped the back into place, rewound it, loaded a new roll and turned around to discover the funnel almost completely gone.

I was not surprised when the pictures came back without a tornado.

I was even *more* surprised when a week later I was sitting in a hotel room with Eric Nguyen, Steve Miller-TX? and Amos Magliocco? (well, some other chasers, whomever they were) and began reviewing the negatives from that roll. The very last negative was about 75% of a frame, and it contained the Guthrie tornado! (well, the remnant funnel) I celebrated.