Top 5 storms you wished you were on.

[Linda Kitchen]

6/8/95 Pampa texas tornado. This was the second year we were chasing. We left on 6/5 and missed it. We had made a friend, Clenny Brown at the NWS in Amarillo, and he called to tell us we should have stayed!! Does anyone else miss the days of going to the NWS for data?

5/27/97 Jarrell, Tx. We had chased the day before and caught tornados, we were driving to Amarillo on the 27th, wish we had gone south!

5/30/98 Spencer, SD. We blasted across Neb. and stopped at a hotel in Souix City to see radar. We went north to De Smet and caught a small tornado but missed the big one. We couldn't believe it!

5/3/99 Moore, OK. Kathy and I had airline tickets for May 15th. Now we both have SW Airlines credit cards, when we charge a certain amount we get free tickets. The beauty of this is when we see a good system comming, we can fly out to meet it. We have made reservations the night before and have been able to get on a plane the next morning.

6/3/99 Almena Ks. We had Drew Smith from Pioneer Productions (Discovery Channel) riding with us for 8 days. We had seen some beautiful storms and one night tornado but had failed to get him "the Big One". Kathy and I left for home on 6/2 and he called the next day to let us know that he and Gene Moore had got the Big One in Almena!! Wish we had been there!

 

[Brian Stertz]

Since I have started chasing:

1) June 15, 1990 Stratton-Culbertson NE F4 (see Storm Data June 1990 - wow)
2) June 24, 2003 Manchester SD F4 (enough said)
3) April 26, 1991 E.Wichita-Andover KS F5 (enough said)
4) May 29, 2004 Harper-Sumner Co. KS (tornado blitz)
5) Tie
June 23, 1998 Columbus NE area wedges (crazy farmer tornado)
April 2, 2006 Marmaduke AR - Caruthersville MO F3 (long tracker)

**Greensburg would have been on the list had this been a daylight scenario**

 

[Darin Brunin]

Since I have started chasing:

1) June 15, 1990 Stratton-Culbertson NE F4 (see Storm Data June 1990 - wow)

I have talked to Dean Cosgrove about this tornado several times. While he didn't see it, a farmer sent him some photos and I must say it's one of the most, if not the most impressive looking tornado/overall structure that I have ever seen. If there was video of it, it would probably blow away Columbus in 98. Think of the big Hill City meso this past year on May 22nd with a huge wedge under it. He swears that if there has ever been a tornado that hasn't been an F5 but deserved it, this is one and from the photos I have seen, rightfully so. I will see if he can post the photos because this was a big event that hasn't gotten a lot of attention.

 

[Brian Stertz]

Yeah it was truly a Great Plains monster...here is the link to Jonathan Finch's 21z surface map from that day. Pretty impressive setup on June 15th, 1990.

http://bangladeshtornadoes.org/UScases/061590/06159021zsf.gif

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

Yeah it was truly a Great Plains monster...here is the link to Jonathan Finch's 21z surface map from that day. Pretty impressive setup on June 15th, 1990.

http://bangladeshtornadoes.org/UScases/061590/06159021zsf.gif

No doubt, check out Imperial NE 82/72 Nice ESE wind, thats pretty amazing surface obs for that corner of SW NE. Even though I know I have been through there, I couldn't recall exactly where Stratton was, so after looking at that Surface map I checked google maps, and sure enough Stratton is just South of Imperial. Given the location and size of the tornado, I certainly wouldn't mind adding it to my list, though I'm afraid I wasn't chasing way back then.

 

[Dean L. Cosgrove]

I was living in Morgan County , CO when that event hit SW NE. It is always hard to ignore dews near 70 at AKO as shown in Brian's sfc map ! To this day that is the storm I most wish I had been on. To my knowledge there were no chasers on this event . Darin's post reminded me that I need to look through some of my old VHS-C and 8 MM chase tapes to try and find the damage footage I shot after this remarkable event and transfer it to DVD.

The following photos are of incredible tornado damage from the tornado June 15, 1990 in Hitchcock County, NE. In my opinion this tornado was a very strong F5 not an F4 as it was rated. I base this on the following damage shots that I took . I have been unable to find pics from --ANY-- tornado that equal the damage shown below .

I have observed damage from "officially" F5 rated tornadoes. These F5 tornadoes did throw vehicles for long distances and tear them into several pieces. The June 15, 1990 tornado went beyond that. It tore vehicles including very heavy farm equipment into small and in some cases almost unrecognizable pieces.

The following pic shows debris that I collected from the path of this tornado. Shown here are pieces of cars, farm equipment , a piece of a fence post twisted severely on both ends and a cast iron skillet. The small green piece of metal is from a vehicle that I documented finding pieces of over a 2 mile path through hilly terrain. I was unable to locate any piece of that vehicle larger than about 2 feet long.

I'll let the rest of the damage pics speak for themselves.
Link to page I just finished

http://www.windsweptchasetours.com/June_15_1990_damage.html

Dean Cosgrove
http://www.chasetours.com/index.html

 

[Matt Chatelain]

6-22-07 Elie, MA
6-23-07 Pipestone, MA Wedge
4-2-06 Caruthersville, MO
3-28-07 Beaver county, OK (I had a afternoon dynamics test, a part of me died that day)
8-24-06 Nicollet, MN Multi-vortex wedge

 

[jeremy wilson]

1. may3, 1999(duh)

2. june12, 2004, was 50 miles south looking at the A-bomb

3. greensburg

4. manitoba, just to say i caught a wedge in canada

5.pampa drillbit tornado

 

[Brian Stertz]

Agree Dean...this bad boy seemed to vastly underrated given types of extreme damage that was done on the 28 mile path across Hitchcock & Red Willow Counties NE. I crossed the damage path a few times chasing out that way years after the fact and it was a mammoth violent tornado. I can only imagine the giant hailbombs that were being thrown downwind of it. The structure on this was amazing. I will scan a few pics in from that Storm Data June 1990 edition. It is jaw dropping stuff.