Storm Chasing in Kansas & Oklahoma

If anyone has watched the movie Twister, let me assure you it has little to do with storm chasing. Real storm chasing is about hours and hours of driving and seeing lots of interesting clouds and maybe, just maybe a few tornados. Well, this weekend we got to see those tornados!

Patrick and I drove to up to north west Kansas just in time to see a couple of tornados form west of Ness City, Kansas. We chased them north past ransom and Cedar Bluff Lake until it got too dark. Earlier a tornado went through the town of Ellis, but that storm was too far north for us to get to in time.

Along the way we passed an armada of chasers surrounding Josh Wurman’s “doppler radar on wheels” and the strange TIV (Tornado Intercept Vehicle), the new Vortex Project crews as well as a few crews from Discovery Channel filming the action of the chasers filming the action. If that sounds confusing, it was. I have never seen so many SUV’s with multiple antennas in my life!

We spent the night in Great Bend after finding every hotel in the area of Hays was filled to the brim with chasers. The next morning we drove down to Oklahoma not expecting to see anything else. We would have continued to Iowa, but I had to be back in town Monday.


That’s where we got the surprise. Near the Oklahoma border we started seeing a discrete thunderstorm on our Mobile Threat Net radar. Luckily we were headed right for it and sure enough it put out. Near Perry, Oklahoma we caught up with the storm and watched as it put down two tornados at the same time. At least that is the way it appeared, I believe one may have been from a storm behind the other and we just happened to be in the right place to see them both.

We followed that storm system for another three hours and got pictures of another tornado and lots of wall clouds before it finally became rain-wrapped and hidden from view.

Returning home around 1:30am Sunday morning we were both beat. After church naps were the order of the day.