Radium, Seward KS Wedges?

[John Hudson]

After chasing along highway 156 on Saturday night, me and my chase partner decided to head back to Great Bend to grab a late bite at Love's, where I heard a broadcast over FM radio that there were two large wedge tornadoes on the ground near Radium and Seward.

The sirens started wailing, so we checked out the WxWorx and saw two significant shear markers on a storm about five miles away. The visibility was bad, so we opted to stay where we were and get hotel rooms before they all filled up.

We fully expected to see a damage path after we left Great Bend the next morning, but saw nothing.

Was there ever any touchdown in that area on Saturday night?

John
VE4 JTH

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

Do you know what time they were reported, because I was in that exact area at one point.

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

We fully expected to see a damage path after we left Great Bend the next morning, but saw nothing.

Was there ever any touchdown in that area on Saturday night?

John
VE4 JTH

There was a damage path that appeared to be just barely to the West of hwy 281 South of Great Bend, in this area there was pretty significant tree damage, not an irrigation system that wasn't fliped, powerpoles even the high transmission ones snapped, it then looked as though it crossed the hwy a few miles to the south of the City where there was some weaker damage to some structures. We had a hard time getting any visuals of tornadoes as they were wrapped in rain, at least from our vantage point. While hard to verify as a tornado on the ground I pulled these video grabs from south of Great Bend Saturday night these would be looking west back at hwy 281 right where there appeared to be quite a bit of damage.

 

[Dick McGowan]

We could see them also, although they were very poor contrast. We actually had to drive pretty fast to get away from the one that was closest to the highway. Our location was about 12-14 miles south of Great Bend looking west. I don't know how other chasers could manage to keep up with them on those dirt roads, flooding was significant.

 

[Joey Ketcham]

Jay Cazel, Tyler Costantini, Chris Wilburn, Bart Comstock and myself were just east of where this wedge tornado was being reported. We were either east of Radium or east of Ellinwood, don't remember.. but for a long time we didn't see anything, but eventually we did see power flashes to our north, don't know if it was a wedge tornado.. but it was definately something. Lightning wasn't flashing enough to give us a look.

(Edited to correct our location, we were east not west)

 

[Jason Bolt]

There were several "tornadoes" in the Radium/Seward area at different times. Early in the evening, around 6 or 7 maybe? There were several funnels that tracked across north of Radium, only one though that I could see a touchdown. A resident north of there reported three touchdowns to me but only minor tree damage was found. Later, after dark, a wedge moved from west of St. John northward and nearly paralelled 281 to the west. There was major damage to 4 structures North of Seward, south of the Barton county line. I have a pic of the tornado that prompted the "tornado emergency" for Great Bend and will post as soon as possible. Hope this helps.

Also, I haven't heard for sure that they did issue a "tornado emergency" for Great Bend but if they did, I am interested in what they saw on radar that prompted them to do that. From the ground, I was seeing a longlived wall cloud that kept putting out weak appearing and shortlived funnels. I wonder if the storm being right on the line between DDC CWA and ICT CWA had anything to do with it?

 

[Skip Talbot]

My chase partner Chad just analyzed some of his later photos and noticed a possible wedge type tornado. The shape is strikingly similar to Dustin's shot, although our location was significantly different. We were about 8 miles northeast of Great Bend on Highway 156 at a rest stop/observation area inside the Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area. The time was approximately 7:30 pm, looking north:

And an extremely enhanced version:

 

[Tony Laubach]

My chase partners and I were about 3 to 5 miles north of St. John and saw both of those tornadoes. We were heading north out of St. John, stopped to check them out, and originally only saw the one. We turned around and retreated south and along the way, saw the second tornado. We continued south to nearly St. John before again heading north to what was becoming a flooded Great Bend. My video on TV shows the big wedge fairly decently, but I didn't get video of the second as I was driving. My chase partner, Tom, may have had video running on the tornadoes as we drove south. On our way back north, we encountered shreaded vegitation in the road for a decent stretch of mileage, so not sure how/where they crossed the highway. In short, we can verifiy the two tornadoes northof St. John/south of Great Bend.