Your First Tornado - what's your story?

[Jay McCoy]

Great idea shane!!

I grew up around severe wx. I remember spending hours with my dad (local meteorologist for 30 yrs) at the tv station while he worked a severe wx event doing cut-ins. I always wanted to go see the storms up close. I started chasing in 85 but didnt catch any tornadoes until the following year. I had no equipment (no such thing as internet back then). We also didnt have things like SPC outlooks. I had to do my forecast on the wx charts that printed out at the tv station. I didnt even have a camera. Just wanted to see the storms. The day was May 7th, 1986. I headed towards the NE Texas panhandle when a large supercell exploded near pampa. I worked ahead of it unitl I stopped south of Canandian near hwy83 and hwy 60. This storm then proceeded to drop 4 beautiful tornadoes including a large truncated cone. I would give anything to have had a camera but can still picture it perfectly in my mind. The only pictures I have ever seen of it were shot by Gene Moore and Tim Marshall which even if I did see them that day I wouldnt have known them to be chasers since that term wasnt used much and we were so few in numbers. (I feel old now).
This wa also the longets chase I had been on up to that time. Canandian is about 100 miles from amarillo and I was only 16 (my folks didnt know I had gone that far).

 

[Jeff Wear]

My first tornado, as well as my first microburst, was on 4/20/1988 in Turlock CA (no that location is not a typo). I was in 5th grade at the time and had really started to get into weather over the past year so this was a real treat for me.

The local media was hyping the possibility of severe weather in CA on this day as a damaging tornado had hit the eastern suburbs of Sacramento the day before and the upper level low was still over the area. That day during lunch my school's principal came up to the front of the cafeteria and announced this weather system was a "thunderstorm type storm" and that we should go inside if it acts up during recess. Skies remained mostly sunny with some building Cu during recess, but by the time school got out at 1pm it was beginning to get dark off to the SE and a few sprinkles of rain were beginning to fall. I took the bus home that day - I lived 1 1/2 mi north-northeast of the school. As we headed north we got out of the rain and I could see blue skies and scattered building Cu from my SW-NW. But as we turned east then south towards my neighborhood I could see a big black wall of rain racing up from the SE. It was amazing seeing how quickly this black wall of rain swept northward across the field just a few hundred feet to my east. When I got off the bus just a block away from my house I was greeted to torrential rain and wind so strong that one kid's umbrella turned inside out. Fortunately my dad was waiting for me at the bus stop to drive me over to my aunt's house - who lived 2 miles to the WSW. When I got to her house I was amazed that they hadn't even had a drop of rain. I stayed there and played games on their C64 (remember this was the 1980's) until about 4pm when my aunt drove me back home. On the way back we started talking about the tornado that hit the Sacramento area the day before and she said, "I hope we don't get one of those funnel clouds"

Well at 5:30pm that's just what happened. I went out to backyard to check the sky and saw what looked like a funnel begin to drop from a dark base about 5 miles to my south-southwest. I ran inside to tell my dad, and when we got back out sure enough there was a dark gray funnel slowly dropping from the base. Over the next few minutes the funnel would gradually grow longer and longer, taking on a nice elephant trunk appearance. Because of houses and trees I could not tell if the actual condensation funnel reached the ground, but it would have had to have been at least 80% of the way to the ground. After about 7 or 8 minutes the funnel became ragged and broke up into segments, then it went into a rope stage for 2 minutes before vanishing altogether.

Everybody in my grade pretty much knew of my interest in weather and tornadoes at that point and everybody was asking me the next day if I had "seen the tornado cloud". One kid claimed that his uncle got video of it and sold it to KCRA-TV in Sacramento for $25.

This is definitely an event I wish I could have observed with the knowledge I have now. But trying to apply the knowledge I have now in retropsect here is my guess what happened. I believe this event occurred in association with a mini-supercell on the northeast side of an upper level low - the parent storm was slowly moving either north or north-northwest, and began producing quite a bit of thunder and lightning during the last 4 or 5 minutes of the event. This event is not listed in Storm Data and there was never any damage reported, although I don't doubt that there was a circulation on the ground capable of damage at some point. If it did it probably occurred south of town where there is not much to hit, and with how much rain we had received over the previous week it would have had a hard time producing much in the way of a visible dust swirl. And even though my first "official" tornado according to Storm Data didn't occur for another 8 1/2 years, I'll always count this one as my first.

 

[Phillip Hurlbut]

My first tornado was on September 18th, 2002 near Blackwell, OK. Gabe Garfield, 2 other friends, and myself went chasing the moderate risk in NW OK. Storms ended up forming and then began to squall out. We more or less lucked out when we noticed rotation in one of the areas of the "squall". Turned out that we had an embedded supercell in the line. We watched the supercell (which had a very nice rain free base and vault) spin away for at least 45 minutes. About 7:25 pm, it decided to produce for us. We noticed dust getting sucked up under the wall cloud, and a funnel started to lower. The funnel only went about 1/5 of the way to the ground, but the dust extended all the way to the cloud base. It was on the ground for about 2 to 3 minutes, and almost produced another one a bit farther to the east.

Thats my story.

 

[Jonathan Whitehead]

Mulvane, KS and it was a big one
took 21 yrs and 2.5months

 

[Marc Grant]

My First Tornado

My first tornado was quite a while back and I was just turning 5 years old but I can remember it quite well. The F5 that struck the Ruskin Heights area of Kansas City, Missouri, which is now known only as South Kansas City, on May 20, 1957 shortly before 8 PM. , is one of the deadliest tornados of all time with 44 persons dead and over 500 injured with almost one third of the over 1800 homes destroyed after a 72 mile track and the heaviest damage being done in the Ruskin area.

My folks had lived in the 3 bedroom slab house for about 2 years, the neighborhood being one of the first in the midwest of it's kind to go up so quickly and cheaply to allow veterans from WWII and the Korean War the opportunity to purchase affordable housing.

I remember the day as being stormy and as I played outside I remember seeing the biggest rain drops falling on the sidewalk in front of the house, not a heavy rain but just large drops. My dad was in and out of the house keeping an eye on the sky.

My aunt had come out with my cousin because she was afraid of the weather and wanted to be safe. Little did she realize what was about to happen.

My mom had my sister and I in my bedroom with my aunt and cousin and they were reading story books to us when suddenly my dad came in from outside and told us to lie flat on the floor. I remember him opening all the windows that he could and turning off the interior lights. He then laid on top of me, my mom on my sister and my aunt on my cousin. I remember crying and the approaching noise.

The next thing I new was hearing my parents calling for us. There was an eary silence and then the sounds of car horns became noticeable and people calling out for their loved ones. It was still raining and as we all got back together we realized that our home was completely gone with only the slab foundation remaining. I remember nothing of the actual moment that it hit.

After digging neighbors cars out from under debris from the homes that were still mostly intact, we were rushed to the hospital where we would learn that there were only minor injuries. My dad had glass blown into his back and I had a gash over my right eye that required stitches. I still have the scar today. My parents car that was in the drive and my aunts car that was in the street all ended up a block behind us.

The days that followed were filled with just hanging out and helping the parents search for what they could salvage. I remember the military personel and eating from the Red Cross truck. We saw also that the high school at the end of my block was mostly destroyed as was the shopping center a few blocks away. How we made it through such a horrible storm I'll never fully understand but someone had to have been watching over us that night.

I've been a storm chaser every since but seriously got into it about 2 years ago. Now I have an 18 year old daughter that shares my love of the weather with me.

I've attached a photo that shows the hood. :shock:

Marc Grant



Ruskin Damage[/url]

 

[Shane Adams]

Damn Marc, that was quite an account, and the photo you included tells it best maybe....incredible.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Mike Peregrine]

Thanks for the post Marc and for telling your story - what an incredible storm.

Here's a familiar photo to many of you of the Ruskin Heights monster:

http://members.aol.com/tornadfoto/p-torn9.html

 

[Bill Hark]

Shane, very cool thread. I hit the jackpot with my first tornado. I was learning to chase while on Cloud 9 Tours. After many days of weak or no storms, there was a traditional Memorial Day Weekend Outbreak. I saw my first tornado on May 25, 1997 in the familiar chase territory of Harper, Kansas. I watched a tower become a supercell and drop a tornado in a period of about 45 minutes. I would have been happy if that was the only tornado but I saw multiple other tornadoes that day including the famous "Dillo-Cam" or Perth Wedge.





Here is a full account of that day:

http://www.harkphoto.com/may251997.html


If only every chase day could be like that. I never came close to that many tornadoes until May 29, 2004 and I haven't again seen the full lifecycle of a supercell from the beginning.

Bill Hark
http://www.harkphoto.com
[/img]

 

[Jeff Whitworth]

This is my first post, BTW. How appropriate -- my first post about my first tornado.

I saw my first tornado on 4/25/1993, when I was 17 years old. My dad, my brother, and I were returning to Tulsa from a conference in Missouri. Earlier at a gas stop in MO, Dad (who has seen plenty of tornadoes but isn't a chaser and has no formal weather training) mentioned something about how the something in the air "felt right for tornadoes" that day. A couple of months prior to this, I had first attended a local spotter training session, so I felt pretty "knowledgeable" about severe storms then.

As we approached Tulsa on I-44, we noticed that the sky looked awfully dark ahead of us. But then again, our vehicle had tinted windows, so everything looked dark. A few miles later, around the I-244 junction, we decided that we had better check things out, so we rolled down the windows, and the sky still looked dark, with some green-looking patches. Dad (who was driving) mentioned that there might be some hail in this storm. He was right about that!

We decided to turn on the radio. As soon as we did, we heard a local TV meteorologist saying, "We have a very dangerous situation, with a circulation over the east side of town" -- which of course is exactly where we were. He went on to say that at this point, "we aren't talking about a tornado." Yet.

Then I looked up and for the first time beheld a true, no-doubt-about-it circulation directly ahead (and almost overhead). It appeared as a white ring of clouds, visibly rotating at probably 5 RPM. I pointed to it and warned Dad that we were about to drive directly underneath it. He said, "I know, but there's nothing we can do; we can't get off the interstate." I looked up and saw what may have been a funnel, along with a definite dust cloud on the ground about 1/2 mi. south of us, good enough to be an "official" tornado. Shortly thereafter we ran into large hail wrapped around the back side of the circulation, prompting Dad to stop the car underneath an overpass (in the traffic lane, I think). In retrospect, I realize that was a bad thing to do, as this turned westbound I-244 into a parking lot, possibly trapping people behind us in the path of a tornado.

Of course, we escaped unharmed, but it was a very scary experience. So for my first tornado, I was not a chaser, but a "chasee".

A week later, Dad told me something even scarier. A few minutes before we encountered the circulation, he had tried to pull off the road into a truck stop to "get out of the storm," but traffic in the right lane prevented him from reaching the exit. I'm glad. That truck stop was demolished by the tornado, and several people died there.

I believe the storm was rated an F4. Would you believe that's still my only tornado? Hopefully that will change soon, but with the peak storm season behind us, I fear it may be next year.

 

[gbacklin]

Hello,

This is my first post, but I had to share my first tornado. It was in 1967, I was 12 and visiting my aunt.

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/wtoill67.htm

She lived 1 block down from an outdoor drive-in movie theater. The walls of the theater was thick very heavy corrugated metal. When the storm was getting pretty severe, she made us go down into her basement. The neat thing about her basement was that it was elevated above the groud about a foot, and it had windows so you could see outside.

When the tornado came through, I was looking out the window at the drive in theater. The tornado hit the theater directly and I saw these pieces of corrugated metal flying around like potato chips...as light as air. We then heard this loud crash and my aunt yanked me away from the window. One of the pieces from the drive in hit her house upstairs. We slept downstairs that evening.

In the morning we went out and my uncle asked my cousin and I to move the piece of metal that hit the house. We could not budge it at all, it was that heavy, it took two adults to move it away from the house. That's when it hit me how strong this tornado was. All I could remember was these things just floating about as light as air, the night before.

I have been fascinated by storms ever since.

My love of the weather has also rubbed off on my two eldest children. We are all annually trained with the Advanced Weather Spotting course as well as all Amateur Radio operators, and all go to our designated sites for our weather net during severe weather.

Thank you for reading !

Take Care,
Gene

 

[Shyanna Busch]

I kinda got my first tornado tonight. (I hope the pics aren't too big)

I'm not sure that it ever actually touched down, but it did cause some damage. There was a storm coming towards town tonight, and I wasn't really keeping an eye on it because it wasn't severe up until it hit. Thunder started getting closer so I went outside to get some pics of the clouds. I walked out my door and saw a cloud really low to the ground and moving in different directions.

http://community.webshots.com/scripts/edit...security=gkcCAm

I put my dog in the car and went down to the end of my trailer court to get a better look at what was going on. THe clouds were rotating really fast. I took some pics of the clouds and then saw a funnel start to form. It wasn't a strong funnel and at first I thought it was just scud until I saw it rotating also. The sky wasn't too dark, but I knew I needed to get to shelter. I don't really have anywhere to go in the trailer court, and the only other option was to head over to my friend Susie's. I turned the car around and started heading for her house. I was less than 1/4 mile from my house when the wind picked up. I turned west and started getting pelted by penny size hail. The rain was torrential--I couldn't see beyond the front of my car. I was flying towards her house at about 55 mph and I had to dodge bushes that had been uprooted. My car was blowing all over the road. I was smack dab inside the core. All I kept thinking the whole way there was, "I could be driving right into a tornado. Please God, just get me there safely." About a block away from Susie's, I saw a large tree uprooted on the side of the road. I got to her house and went to the basement. I still wasn't sure if a tornado had actually hit. The sirens never went off and we were only under a severe storm warning.

Susie said that right before the worst of the storm hit, she heard what she thought was dump trucks going down the road, but when she looked outside, there were no trucks, only the whirling, ominous clouds. She tried to call me, then went to the basement.

After everything died down, I went home and looked at the pics I took. I tried to find a radar that I could see what the storm looked like. It didn't show a hook, but more of a huge teardrop. Anyways, here's the pic of funnel. The trees cut off the whole view so I don't know how far down it reaches.

]http://community.webshots.com/scripts/edit...ity=gkcCAm[url]

Edited: the image didn't work, so I posted the URl[/url]

 

[Bobby Lang]

Shyanna congrats on your first tornado. Also, your images don't work when I click on your url I get

An error has occurred.

You do not appear to be the owner of this album.
Make sure you are logged in.

Please push the Back button on your browser to correct this problem.
Thank you.

If you need hosting for a image or two send me a pm I'll be glad to host it for you if you want...

 

[Sarah Albyn]

My first and only tornado was when I was 7 years old!

I was getting ready for school and a really bad storm came through and of course liking storms I was standing in the kitchen watching it. The weather alert went off at the same time the serins did. I caught a breif glimpse of the tornado before my mom grabed me and rushed me down the stairs to the basement (it was over the house by the time we hit the bottom stair).

I just remeber that it was a little white funnel with a lot of roof shingles spinning around it! It didn't do any major damge in the neighborhood or to our house! We had a screen broken, one cracked window, and a few shingles blown off (most people had shingles taken off) and our neighbor behind us lost a big tree limb!

It was the coolest thing that I ever saw and it just fueled my interest in weather that much more! Know I have to get out and chase the big storm is Ok, KA, and TX!

 

[Shyanna Busch]

[Broken External Image]:http://home.earthlink.net/imagelib/...itebuilderpictures/june_21.jpg&target=tlx_new

http://home.earthlink.net/imagelib/sitebui...&target=tlx_new

 

[fplowman]

Of course growing up in the KC area i have been in many a dangerous storm. Whenever there was a warning in the area i would jump in the car and drive to wherever they reported.. Not having any idea of what I was doing. Of course I can imagine Im not the only one here whos mom would yell.. " Get your ass in this house and down in the basement" As we stand in the yard looking into the sky trying to see hwatever them there sirens is whalin fer.. lol

Nice warm day summer of 95 driving around Garden City Mo. heading towards KC.. hotter than hell.. Know nothing whatsoever really about chasing how to's or storms really..

It is so damn hot! no AC windows down. Wait.. what the hell.. An angry lil' thunderstorm ahead moving across the highway west to east.. .. uh oh it gonna rain hard on me.. better roll up them win-ders.. Ok so I get into this storm and uhmmm well tree branches and debris the size of my arm are flying through air in circular type fashion over the fence past the win-der of the van.. Uh oh debris pelting side of van.. FEAR overwhelming.. stepping into the accelerator.. I got it floored and im only goingabout 35 miles an hour???? total rain wrap ... head down not even looking at road as the noise and wind are scaring me into revoking the lords name for some comfort.. lol :lol:

As Im leaving through the other side of this storm cell I can see in my periphery portions of the roof coming off of this house and it ripping a tarp off of a boat.. I stood there and watched vehicles heading south drive through.. they were looking over at me wondering what i was doing while I stood on the side of the highway looking back at the storm trying to see this anomolous weather cell i drove through.

Ok so ever since I have been really obsessed with chasing as a sport and science..