Parsons tornadoes

[Shyanna Busch]

I don't have permission to post in target area so I'll ask this question here. Mods, feel free to move it if you need to.

For those of you that saw the Parsons, KS tornadoes on Thurs, did you happen to see the cross roads you were on? Those are my old stomping grounds. Those roads must have been really hard to navigate while chasing. Not only do you have the river, but you also have a huge rock quarry in South Mound, Lake McKinley, and lots of roads with no outlets.

I called my mom in Parsons to make sure she was ok when I saw the warning for Parsons. She said the sirens weren't even going off and she was having a hard time believing me when I told her the tornado was 5 north of her.

 

[Mikey Gribble]

I may be off by a mile or two. I don't remember exactly where I was. The first tornado touched down very near to or on Lake Parsons. I tracked ENE and the house I saw it hit was by Meade and 40th or 50th RD. The first tornado lifted just NE of the house about a half mile or about 1-2 miles West of 59. The second tornado touched down NE of South Mound a few miles. It did cross the river and there were trees blocking the road that ran North along the river 2 miles South of 80th RD. This made it very hard to get to the bridge at 80th without backtracking or going further South to cross. It was tough to keep up with between the lakes and river. I put a link to the survey on the talk thread. It shows tornado tracks on there.

 

[Russel Parsons]

Shyanna,

We were practically neighbors then. I grew up just to the northwest of McCune, Kansas. You can find the Wichita NWS damage survey and a tornado track map at the below link. Hope that helps a little.

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ict/cgi-bin/vuesto...MBER=2005042215

 

[Shyanna Busch]

Thanks for the links. I used to cruise those country roads when I was bored. Too bad I wasn't visiting my parents on Thursday. I would have been thrilled to catch those tornadoes.

 

[Shane Adams]

I'm rather surprised ICT has the starting point of tornado #1 exactly right. We were almost underneath it when it formed, just east of the road. I'm guessing that's the place we were (relative to the track map placement) because JR came over the radio during that time and said we had to go two miles south for our next east option.

I have been wondering if maybe the first tornado we saw was a different one than the widely-known "Parsons" tornado, because for the entire time we could see it until it wrapped up, it was a small multi-vortex tornado, with only a nub funnel above it. We moved two miles south and as we turned east, had our first view of the "elephant trunk" look of the tornado. At the time we assumed it was the same one, just having strengthend and "filled in." However judging by some of the captions with some of the photos I've seen, I believe many people first saw it as the elephant trunk and considered that point the beginning of the tornado (there was no one else around us when it first developed). Then again - we were almost underneath it so if there were others around the storm, they'd have been at least a mile or two away from us (and out of our view).

I sent an email to Chance at ICT describing what we saw, and letting him know I'm sending in the video Monday. It's probably the same tornado, but I would like ICT to have a look at the video and compare it to other reports/videos they've seen. I'd venture to guess not many others have a video showing this intial phase of the tornado before it "filled in."

 

[Mikey Gribble]

When the tornado first developed I was about a mile West of it. I had trees blocking my view so I wasn't 100% sure it was on the ground, but I was pretty damn sure going off of how far the funnel extended down from the cloud base. I called it in to the station and they were relaying to NWS. I told them that it had touched down on or right by Parsons Lake. I took the northern option around the lake and had the tornado in sight the whole time as I closed in on it from the West and can confirm that it was the same tornado. I have video of the funnel phase of the tornado, but like Shane said there weren't any people around for the first tornado. I didn't see any chasers until the first tornado had died out.