MovingPictures

Greensburg, Kansas Video link...

I have posted a copy of the Greensburg, Kansas aftermath video on my Storm Chase 2007, for the video, click HERE.

Tough on the First Responders...

It is amazing how seeing something first hand can affect you. We have all seen disaster movies, and coverage of disasters on TV, but witnessing it first hand is a whole new ballgame. During my time as a photojournalist I have covered the aftermath of the May 3rd, 1999 Oklahoma City Tornado (the day after), a bridge collapse, flooding, and airplane crash, numerous fires, hurricanes, automobile wrecks, and shootings. But nothing has affected me like the scene after the Greensburg, Kansas tornado.

Maybe it hits real close to home because my storm chase group MESO, cheated death that night also. The tornado curved just around our vehicles on SR 183, just west of Greensburg during its direct hit of the town. Maybe it is because the nine of us were some of the first on the darkened scene, overwhelmed by the humanity and the walking wounded coming out of the piles of twisted rubble left in the wake of the tornado. It left us with a real feeling of helplessness, a feeling of maybe you missed someone in a house after a search, wishing we had more equipment with us than we did, so we could have done more.

Many of my chase partners are having a rough time also, we try to talk to each others, and other professionals that have been through an event of this scope. This is hard, because not many events like this have ever happened.

When I am sleeping I will wake up to the images of a woman, holding her hand out to me, crying, looking for her relatives. Or the little boy, age five or six, sitting with a total stranger, looking for his parents. I literally could do nothing but hold their hand and point them towards the person in the triage area, who is making a list of the missing and injured.

I am sure this is not the last time I will write about this, it helps, if there is anyone from Greensburg, KS that might happen to read this, please write me and let me know how things are going. I am planning a trip back sometime in the near future, I tell myself it is for some follow-up photos, but I am also thinking it might be for some healing. Either way, it will be great to see some of the people I might have helped that night on their way to recovery.

No, I am sure it will help...

A Stormy Jaunt...

Tonight I jumped into my truck and headed out to the Ohio/Indiana border and intercepted a few storms coming into the area. I encountered some nice low cloud bases on a few cells, CG lightning and I drove into some 50 mph winds. There were two tornadoes reported on the Indiana/Michigan border earlier in the afternoon. No matter how much I chase here in Ohio, it just does not stack up to the Great Plains.

But believe me, any storm is a good storm in my book.

Mother's Day Hunt...

My son Noah and I went shopping for Mother's Day presents Friday. When I went to wrap the presents, my son insisted that he hide them for his mother to find. Before I could return to wrap them, they were all hidden around the house, ala Easter Bunny.

The worst part was that he could not remember where he hid some of the presents, an hour after he hid them. We woke up and made breakfast for Mary; and after he remembered the secret hiding places, we sent her on the hunt with clues of warmer or colder.

After all the presents were found, we ate breakfast and celebrated one of the most unique Mother's Days ever for sure...

Final Greensburg Torrnado Account...

Here is a final accounting of the Greensburg , Kansas tornado by my storm chase group MESO, from the night of May 4th, 2007, after the first EF5 on record destroyed the town.

Click Here to read the PDF document.

There's No Place Like Home...

We clicked our heels together and Chris Howell and I drove nearly 900 miles home last night. I got to bed at about 3:00 a.m. in the morning after leaving Kansas City at 11:00 a.m. in the afternoon. The drive was not bad except for the nearly one hour delay at a bridge construction site on I-94 just inside of Michigan. I slept till noon in MY OWN BED!!!

Noah got a surprise in the morning, finding me sleeping the the room next to him. He gave me a big hug and kiss, he got one of his surprises in the kitchen. A box turtle we named EF5, or as we affectionately nicknamed it "Effie". He took the turtle to school for show and tell. If he could only tell the true story of this turtle to his friends.

We found the turtle in the middle of the road the day before the Greensburg, Kansas tornado. MESO has a long history of saving turtles from imminent crushing along the highways of the Great Plains. Many of the times, we had a turtle mascot with us, we have had severe weather events, Attica, KS, Silverton, TX and now the granddaddy of them all, Greensburg, KS.

I have returned to my own Land of OZ, and will be spending the day shopping for a Mother's Day present for my WONDERFUL wife Mary, and watching the long promised viewing of Spiderman 3 with Noah. It will take some time to process the events of May 4th in Greensburg. Time to get the smell if the destruction out of my nose, and the sounds of people crying for help out of my head. The sights of people walking down the street in bare feet and tattered clothes, bloodied, clinging to loved ones and what few remnants of their former life that could carry.

This was a MESO storm chase for the record books. We're not in Kansas Anymore...

Here We Go Again...

We are overnighting in Norman, OK, just South of Oklahoma City. We have watched a line of storms heading our way all night, we had a pretty good lightning storm as a line of storms moved through.

At about Midnight central time, we had a tornado warning issued for Canadian county, just to our NW. El Reno had damage reported, and at least six semi-trucks were blown off I-40 west of OKC.

As the Tornado Warning was issued, we all looked at each other with the look of "Lets Go" in our eyes, but it took just a few seconds to remember the night we went through just a few days ago in Greensburg, Kansas.

We quickly settled back into our beds and watched the local TV coverage...

Ominious Warning...

Here is the tornado emergency statement that Mike Umscheid issued last Friday night from the Dodge City, KS NWS office before the tornado destroyed Greensburg, Kansas.

SEVERE WEATHER STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DODGE CITY KS
941 PM CDT FRI MAY 4 2007

KSC097-050300-/O.CON.KDDC./O.CON.KDD/O.CON.KDDC./O.CON.KDDC.
KIOWA KS-941 PM CDT FRI MAY 4 2007

…A TORNADO WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 1000 PM CDT FOR CENTRAL
KIOWA COUNTY…

…A TORNADO EMERGENCY FOR GREENSBURG….
AT 937 PM CDT…NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE METEOROLOGISTS AND STORM
SPOTTERS WERE TRACKING A LARGE AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS TORNADO. THIS
TORNADO WAS LOCATED 5 MILES SOUTH OF GREENSBURG…MOVING NORTH AT 20
MPH.

A VIOLENT TORNADO WAS ON A DIRECT PATH FOR PORTIONS OF GREENSBURG…
ESPECIALLY THE EASTERN PORTIONS OF TOWN. TAKE IMMEDIATE TORNADO
PRECATIONS…THIS IS AN EMERGENCY SITUATION FOR GREENSBURG!!

A TORNADO WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 200 AM CDT SATURDAY MORNING
FOR SOUTHWESTERN KANSAS.

LAT…LON 3749 9936 3745 9929 3760 9901 3764 9936

Amazing Gesture...

Nancy Bose, Chris Howell and I were on our way to Oklahoma City, to get into position for some storms, when I got a call for some cutline info for some photos I had taken. We decided to stop in Wellington, KS at one of our favorite haunts, the Wellington Steakhouse.

We ordered our dinners and were all working on laptops, in our MESO shirts, and Nancy had on her Union Vale, NY fire coat, she is Firefighter/EMT, and President of the fire department. A patron asked us if we had been to Greensburg, and we told them our story of the horrific night and our rescue efforts, moments after the tornado exited the town.

I got my cutline info phoned into Polaris Images, and we finished our mouth watering steaks. The waitress came over after we were done, and we asked for our checks. She replied "You are all taken care of".

A look of disbelief came over our faces, we asked what happened. Later we figured out that someone sitting near us, paid for our bill after overhearing the story.

This is a Thank You to the kind and generous person that paid for our bill at the Wellington Steakhouse on Monday, May 7th, along I-35 in Kansas. It is people like this, and all over Kansas, that will help Greensburg make a comeback over time...

More Accounts From the Greensburg EF5 Tornado...

By Brian McNoldy, Research Associate, Colorado State University, and MESO member.

On Friday May 4, as we were heading south on Hwy 183 toward Greensburg, KS, around 9:50 p.m., the winds got incredibly strong out of the west.

Getting reports via phone that a large wedge was crossing the highway a few miles in front of us and heading for Greensburg, we paused.  After getting word that it had crossed SR 183, we continued south toward the intersection with SR 54.  It was then that the west winds really kicked up, rocking the vehicles to nearly the point of rolling... we could see large tree branches and limbs flying over our heads, and insulation and other debris blowing across the road.  There was approx 1" hail at this time too.  We assumed that this was the RFD, since a tornado to our south would have produced EASTERLY winds.

Well, the following damage survey has recently been compiled: Click Here.
(This only shows the Greensburg tornado... tornadoes did continue onward to the northeast)

It is very likely that we were a couple miles north of SR 54 on SR 183 when the tornado turned west and crossed back over SR 183 behind us.  This would produce the violent westerly winds, and be timed exactly right.  The wedge was an amazing 1.6 miles wide, and was an EF5.  Aside from the 10-foot visibility we had, we would never have seen the tornado anyway... something 1.6 miles wide would have filled our field of view from that close.  Nothing but a solid wall of debris and rain.  In a way, we were lucky to be ignorant to that at the time, it helped us keep our wits about us.

The next day we drove that path again to see things in the daylight, and we were queasy over what we saw.  Nancy put it eloquently: God had a plan for us that night, we needed to be there in Greensburg to help those people.

Our brush with the tornado is not something we'll ever brag about, or anything we're proud of.  Our footage of the drive and the damage has either been sent free of charge to places, or fees for its use will go to aid recovery.  It was more dangerous than we knew at the time, and miraculously we were taken through the night unscathed.  It seems we were placed that close to Greensburg at the time of the F5 for a reason.  The people in MESO made a difference to the victims, and THAT is what we're proud of.  In the 5 hours we spent there, we organized the command center and staging areas, assisted victims in medical emergencies as well as directing them to the centralized shelters, and documented the scene for the records.  The first responders of the city, county, and neighboring cities were there, but so many of them had missing spouses, children, etc that many were too shaken to think clearly and quickly.  In the face of chaos, they did a fearless job of search and rescue through the night.  Although I can still hear the screams and yells for help in the darkness, I can also still hear the "Thank you so much for coming so quickly, God bless you" and the people who just wanted to be hugged or have their hand held...

FYI...

CONTACT NUMBER: People looking for friends or family members from Greensburg should call the American Red Cross in Pratt, Kansas, at 620-672-3651, according to Greensburg City Administrator Steve Hewitt.

Greensburg Death Toll Rises...

Two more victims were found in Greensburg, KS after the deadly May 4th tornado that wiped out nearly 95% of the small Kansas town. One victim was found among debris, and another was pulled from a nearby lake. This raises the death toll to eleven.

Some of the best video of the massive tornado was shot by Darin Brunin and Dick McGowan, their video is posted on YouTube, and their website is www.TornadoLive.com.

More photos from moments after the tornado struck Greensburg, including the supercell from a distance, can be seen at www.allandetrich.com.

Darin Brunin and Dick McGowan

Greensburg Tornado Rated EF5...

This from the Dodge City National Weather Service...

The First "5" Rating on the new Enhanced-Fujita Scale
...and the first "5" classification since May 3, 1999 when an F5 tornado ripped through Moore, Oklahoma.

This page will be updated with detailed information on path lengths, widths, and locations as the detailed surveys are completed.  A number of images will also be included in this story from ground surveys and of the tornado itself.  Significant tornadoes tracked over the same areas on May 5th and distinguishing tracks from May 4th and May 5th will be difficult...along with the fact that extensive areal flooding has been occurring in the area of some of the tornado tracks.  Below is an image from the Dodge City doppler radar velocity data showing the incredible rotational "tornado vortex signature" shortly before changing the town of Greensburg, Kansas forever...

Watching a tornado is a fascinating thing, from a distance. The Greensburg tornado was the Godzilla of all recent tornadoes. We were several miles from the tornado when it hit Greensburg, and we still had winds of at least 120 mph. The sound was so loud, we had trouble talking to each other in our van.

This day will be something that will be burned into my memory for ever. Seeing the damage path in daylight put the whole thing in perspective. How large the tornado was, and how powerful Mother Nature is. I have covered four hurricanes, Gloria, Floyd, Bonnie and Rita, but this tornado of May 4th, 2007 put the wet winds of any hurricane to shame.

Reality Check...

We caught three tornadoes yesterday and all three were within spitting distance of Grensburg, Kansas.

Greensburg was nearly wiped off the map on May 4th by a mile wide tornado. As I wrote in my previous post, we were driving down Kansas SR 183 south just one mile to the west of Greensburg, the same time the tornado was wiping out so many people lives.

The reality check is the damage we encountered on SR 183 while driving North up past Greensburg yesterday evening. Trees were blown over, a semi overturned and power poled snapped. It gave me a chill, but we are OK. Somehow we drove right through this devastation untouched.

We were lucky, Greensburg was not.

Last night while driving East on SR 50 after dark, we saw another tornado, a wedge like hit Greensburg, lit up by lightning. It was almost in the same path as the large tornado the night before. 93 tornadoes were reported yesterday, 33 the day before. It just seems to keep coming...

A Night to Remember...

Well, first I have to say the last day or two have been more than interesting. We started the day with a very high probability of severe storms and tornadoes. We went to the Great Bend, KS area to wait for initiation, everything looked like it was in place, moisture, shear, convection, and the rest of the ingredients that were needed to complete the recipe for severe storms.

Secondly, I will say we are all fine and unharmed.

We skirted the tornado that destroyed the small town of Greensburg, KS, making it through winds of nearly 120 mph, with debris flying horizontally to the ground. Our van nearly tipping over several times. We lost a headlight to debris and got some hail dents, but other than that, we exited the storm intact.

Our group was returning to Dodge City, KS after spotting a cell, that started in the Dodge City area, we saw nothing on radar one moment, and the next there was a huge supercell with oveshooting tops. But that was not the storm that hit Greensburg, it was a cell that popped up to the south of the first cell. This stole all the energy from the one we first spotted and ran with the energy.

The storm grew so big, so fast that it formed a wedge tornado, that scoured the town of Greensburg nearly off the map.

As we got out of the heavy rain and winds from the tornado, we encountered first responders heading into Greensburg. Our group MESO has many members that are trained in search and rescue, and are professional firefighters and EMT's. We spoke with the fire chief of Greensburg, volunteered our services, and he escorted us in, just 10 minutes after the tornado left the town. We parked our vehicles and broke out our radios, lights and trauma packs and went to work.

For the next several hours, we all did house to house searches, triage of wounded victims, and helping set up a command post for some organization. After searching at least five homes and several vehicles that no longer resembled their original forms, I found only one dead dog in a home, a large shepherd-mix dog, whose owners were thankfully safe somewhere else.

I resisted the temptation to take photos until the number of first responders from neighboring towns entered the damaged area.

Our MESO members did a great public service this day, and I am proud to be a member of this elite group of chasers. We did a similar search and rescue in Attica, KS, on May 12th of 2004, but nothing on this scale or scope.

I covered the aftermath of the May 3rd,1999 Oklahoma City tornado, and this devastation compared to the damage path and destruction in Oklahoma. We saw some people head out in ambulances that we knew would not make it. It was hard to know if the people walking around looking for lost relatives would ever see their loved ones again. The death toll at the time of this posting is nine.

We wish the people of Greensburg, Kansas the best in their recovery, it will be a long hard road to recovery. Judging by the spirit of people willing to volunteer and donate we saw during our six hours at ground zero, the town will rebound, and life will return to somewhat normal for the residents of Greensburg who choose to stay in this small town with a big spirit.

Travel Day...

We drove from Junction, TX to Perryton, TX, the last town of any size in Texas, before you drive into the Oklahoma panhandle. Things are looking good for central Kansas tomorrow, setting up for a major event on Saturday. We had Shane Motley, a meteorologist for KBTX TV in Bryan College Station,TX, joined our group tonight and is staying for a week. Shane is our newest member and this is his first chase with us.

Very Close...

In the last day we have driven from Albert Lee, MN to Junction, TX. A trek of 1153.98 miles according to MapQuest. I can tell you for sure we all feel like we traveled 1153.98 miles. Today we drove through winds of nearly 80 mph near San Angelo, TX, and were very near a tornado, but visibility was horrible, due to insanely hard rains. We are spending the night in Junction, TX and heading to central Kansas to set up for Friday's storms. We had some decent hail and some beautiful Mammatus to end the night. We met up with a group of chasers from Florida, shared videos and stories.

First Hail of the Year...

We found some storms in Minnesota today, we drove North from Clear Lake, Iowa and intercepted some storm about 70 miles into lower Minnesota and encountered the first hail of the year; some nice lightning and a few neat looking clouds. The forecast was for pretty much for what we encountered. The hail was enough to tear up our vehicle stickers, but still not big enough for some.

We will be heading South tomorrow towards Topeka, KS, in preparation for the next few days, stay tuned.

See the photos at my StormChase 2007 link.