Heading West on Rt. 6 out of Kirksville, Missouri, I saw my first tornado. Nothing I've ever seen could have prepared me for what I witnessed Wednesday. Nothing will ever erase my memories of that day. I've seen at least one funnel cloud in the skies over Chester County, but it didn't come close to what was occurring in front of my eyes. A few hundred yards ahead of me, a large tornado mowed through the roadside trees and crossed into the road.


Minutes earlier, the storm had claimed its first victim, a woman whose mobile home was picked up into the air and thrown by the tornado. The air was dense with debris as it crossed Rt. 6 just West of our van, filled with the remnants of structures and trees. Our guide and driver, Meteorologist Matt Van Every, put the van in reverse and began backing away from the circulating mass of rain and shrapnel. Still, the tornado closed on us - it seemed for a few moments that we would be sucked into the vortex. However, Matt assured us that while the wind was howling around us, we were far enough from the inflow (the air being sucked into the tornado) to be safe. He was right. The tornado crossed the road at an angle - so while it appeared to be coming straight for us, it was actually moving into the field adjacent to us.


Our perception of time and distance, I have come to find, are significantly skewed during moments of intense stress. Our first intercept of the Kirksville Tornado seemed to last an eternity and yet only seconds at the same time. I did say first intercept, because our experience with this deadly tornado weren't over yet.


As soon as it was safe, Matt turned the van around and headed back towards Kirksville. The tornado was now chewing through fields to our left, running parallel to us. It intersected electrical lines and several power flashes glowed bright blue over the treetops. Waiting for the tornado in a position to our North was Reed Timmer in the armored SRV. They were able to witness the tornado before it crossed the main road (Rt. 63) that runs North-South through Kirksville. After it moved East of the SRV, it claimed two more victims and collided with a car dealership, flipping many of the vehicles over, and causing extensive damage to homes and businesses there.


As the tornado continued to move East, so did we. We lost sight of the tornado for a few minutes, but found another wall cloud forming directly ahead of us. Based on the radar and visual observations, Matt said the tornado that it would produce would be very large and powerful. As we continued East on Rt. 11, the road curved 90 degrees to the left several miles from downtown Kirksville (many roads in the Midwest are like this - with only a sequence of 90 degree turns instead of a diagonal route, following the outlines of properties and farms). We could see dark clouds ahead and to our left, and the growing wall cloud to our right. As we crested a hill, Matt got a clear look at the dark cloud to the left and realized that it wasn't rain or hail, but a tornado!



There were two vehicles ahead of us, including one driven by Tim Samaras, a well-respected storm chaser who has been featured by National Geographic. They saw the tornado at almost the same time we did, but they were further up the road, just feet from the oncoming tornado on the crest of the hill. Both trucks were able to turn around in a driveway with only seconds to spare. Had we tried the same maneuver, we would have been hit by the tornado. Instead, we began backing up quickly, but found our exit blocked by other vehicles. As we tried to continue backing up, the trucks ahead of us finished turning around and passed us speeding in the opposite direction, followed by a third truck coming from that direction. This truck, which held a family whose house sat just up the road, was trying to flee the area, but had found its path blocked by the turning vehicles, and was forced to wait directly in the tornado's path as they cleared the road. They were probably less than 150 feet from the tornado as it howled up through a field towards them.


In the air was more debris than we had seen before, and was much larger in size. There were rooftops, large metal sheeting from grain silos, barns, lumber, mangled farm equipment, trees... The sound was deafening. Many people say tornadoes sound like a freight train. I always wondered whether they meant the sound of the train rumbling past or the sound of the train's horn or whistle. I thought it sounded more like a large waterfall, just constant loud rushing, but with a bass note that made the air seem to tremble.


The tornado dwarfed the white farmhouse that stood among some trees on the crest of the hill in front of us. It looked like the tornado would completely destroy it right before our eyes. Luckily, the tornado was about 50 feet North of the house, and spared it, but flattened a road sign just up the road to the ground. It pulled a barbed wire fence, posts and all, straight out from the ground and dragged it across the road. It snapped telephone poles in half like they were matchsticks. But the house stood.


Meanwhile, we were watching the scene unfold directly in front of us, all the time trying to move back, more from the falling debris than the tornado itself. The tornado passed about 150 feet from where we had stopped, but the debris swirling around it was well over our heads and falling all around us, even behind us. This debris cloud racing around the tornado made it appear to be 2 or 3 times larger than it was, although the velocity of the winds was very apparent and very real. As I sat in the front seat of the van, the inflow was sucking all the air, rain and debris around us towards it, but our van held steady. Almost immediately after crossing the road, the tornado lost its strength and dissipated (called roping-out, for the rope-like shape it takes while dying). We drove forward, but found our path blocked by the barbed wire fence, so we turned around, and took pictures of the tornado dying to our East and the damage around us. After that, we decided that we were done chasing for the day and headed back towards downtown Kirksville.

Only a handful of people in the world have voluntarily done what we accomplished that day - getting within 100 yards of a large and powerful tornado. Not only did we intercept an F3 tornado, but we did it twice, about 8 miles apart. When we headed back to Kirksville, we didn't know the extent of the damage. We didn't know that three people had been killed. We didn't know that homes had been completely destroyed. We didn't know what path the tornadoes had taken. We didn't know that the tornadoes we saw on either side of Kirksville were actually the same one tornado, just eight miles apart.

The following link shows the sequence after we have seen the tornado for the first time, and after we have crossed back across town toward the newly-forming wall cloud:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uP0eDDag5A

When we drove back into Kirksville, we found most of the town intact. It was quickly getting dark, and access to the Northern part of town was blocked off by emergency personnel. We would return the following day to do a damage survey, and hopefully better understand the sequence of events that left a community forever changed.

Check back this weekend for the results of the damage survey and some of the survey photos.

(Note: the National Weather Service has already completed their damage survey, but with evidence that we collected during the event, and during our own damage survey, we strongly disagree with their rating of EF1-EF2 damage. Our assessment showed strong EF3 damage and evidence of winds approaching and possibly exceeding known windspeeds in the EF4 range. Also note that the EF (Enhanced Fujita) rating is based on surveyed damage and not recorded windspeeds, since there is currently no way* to measure these winds.)

The world is a small place. There are three guests on this trip, and one guide. Three of us have spent significant time living in Chester County. Our guide lived in Thorndale for several years, and another one of the guests was a Coatesville resident for a number of years. I've been a West Chester resident since day one. This in itself is quite surprising, yet it's not the full story. The last trip I took was to Glacier National Park, in Northwestern Montana. While riding the park shuttle, it became evident that three out of the four groups of people on the shuttle were or had ad one time been West Chester residents. For all the land in this country of ours, it seems that my hometown is well represented.

The common bond between all of us, aside from being travelers, is the desire to witness the extraordinary in nature, to experience the sublime. To get close to nature in its rawest, most powerful form. From walking among mountains and glaciers, to close encounters with wildlife, to standing beneath towering thunderstorms, it's the same goal - to change one's life perspective through experience.

So, what am I doing in Kansas City, Missouri, 1,000 miles from anywhere else I've ever been, getting ready to voluntarily put myself in the path of one of the most powerful forces on earth? (The energy released by an average thunderstorm is roughly the same as a 20-kiloton nuclear warhead.) The answer for many of my friends and colleagues was to finally provide concrete proof that I've got a screw (or two) loose upstairs. The answer for me was getting ready to witness the awesome power and complexity of nature, in a way that very few people get to experience, and to see the Midwest, which by the way (so far) isn't quite as flat and featureless and monotonous as it looks from the air.

The first thing we discussed after meeting as a group was that we were hundreds of miles from where we wanted to be, which was somewhere in Southern Oklahoma. That's where, hopefully, there would be enough moisture being pumped northwards from the Gulf of Mexico to initiate the formation of supercell thunderstorms on Tuesday afternoon. It's not the most likely setup for severe weather, but if the ingredients all come together, there could be potential. After that, we'll head far North into Illinois where there is the potential for a strong outbreak of severe weather on Wednesday.

So how do I know this? Because other people smarter than me, who happen to be very good at math and reading weather patterns work at the Storm Prediction Center (see links) in Norman, Oklahoma. They issue "products" (forecasts) called Convective Outlooks that outline the potential for severe weather throughout the U.S. These outlooks are based on 4 risk levels. No Risk, Slight Risk, Moderate Risk, and High Risk. Severe weather can occur even when there is no risk, and when there is Slight Risk there's a decent chance of severe weather. But when they issue a Moderate Risk outlook, it's a good idea to stay close to the radio or television, because severe weather is imminent, and strong tornadoes are possible. High Risk, the highest level, has a very high probability of not only producing tornadoes, but very large and destrucive ones. So while a Moderate Risk day is not a certainty, it's a very solid bit of information to listen to. Especially when it's issued 3 days early.

This is not to sound eager for destrucive tornadoes. Most tornadoes occur in the middle of the prairie, with minimal impact on human life or property. If we have our choice, that's where we want the weather to happen. But it's important that severe weather does occur right now, because the largest and arguably most impotant study ever done on tornadoes is occuring right now. Called Vortex 2, it involves hundreds of scientists and meteorologists from around the country and the world, and millions of dollars worth of research and equipment to better understand how and why tornadoes happen, and ultimately how to predict them better and save lives.

So stay tuned, it's going to be educational at the least.