Tour Director's Field Report

Just to get this entered into the chase logs - I'm uploading the video right now and photos and a detailed summary of the chase will be coming later. This was a great day that ended with a 22 minute long-lived tornado near Arnett, OK. This tornado happened outside of the SPC moderate risk area and was a blast to just sit back and watch from our vantage point looking west...

Today is a day that will forever live in our minds and in the minds of the residents of Kiowa County, Kansas, specifically the residents of Greensburg, Kansas.  The tornado photos contained in this storm chasing log show a weak tornado that happened near Arnett, Oklahoma in the hours before sunset.  This storm system would later travel to the northeast and produce a series of tornadoes, including a large wedge tornado that would be the first rated EF-5 under the new Enhanced Fujita Scale.

In order for a tornado to earn a rating on the EF scale, it has to cause some kind of damage.  It is from the extent of this damage that we are able to determine its approximate wind speeds and give it a rating from EF0 to EF5.   Obviously, being rated an EF-5 a tornado must have created an extreme amount of damage, and this one did - it destroyed an entire town.  That town is Greensburg, KS and for those who lived there they will never forget the events of May 4th, 2007.

Kansas people are some of the kindest, most caring and best people I have ever met.  Everyone in America depends on the Kansas farmer and the communities in which they live.  These small towns located in Kansas, and throughout much of the plains are more than just towns, they are families.  The residents of Greensburg, KS will be a closer family than ever before on May 5th, 2007.  Greensburg will rebound with time.  It may not be the town that we know so well with The Jayhawk Motel and the IGA store on main street, but if I know the people who live in my home state, Greensburg will be a stronger community than it ever has been.  We all wish Greensburg, Kansas the very best in their challenging times ahead.

We traveled north after the Arnett storm and stayed with this storm while it was created havoc in Kiowa County, Kansas.  However, we did not obtain great photographic evidence of the tornado itself due to the fact that this large tornado happened after sunset.  Chasing storms at night can be an extremely dangerous practice, and it's not recommended for those who are inexperienced.  And, as experience will tell you when attempting a chase during dark hours, it's best to stay further away than you might normally get to the base of a storm during daylight hours.  This will likely mean that you'll not end up with significant photographic evidence, but the more important thing to remember is that you'll live to chase another day.

Being originally from Kansas and having been partially raised by grandparents who were once Kansas farmers, my heartfelt sympthy lies with the good folks of Greensburg, Kansas.   It is because of events like this that people become storm chasers.  Not because they wish to observe the complete destruction of towns and people's entire lives, but because they feel a need to help serve their communities and those communities around them.   Providing eye-witness information to The National Weather Service during tornado events helps save lives.   Many storm chasers and meteorologist deserve a lot of credit for saving so many lives on this fateful night in rural southwest Kansas.

We chase storms for many reasons.  For some, it's strictly a scientific mission.  For others, such as myself, it's for the raw beauty that occurs above the plains in a wonderment of nature itself.  But for all, we love what we do.  Events such as the Greensburg Tornado humble all humans as a stark reminder that our planet always sets the rules, not us.  However, we can help - through proper education, gained experience and modern technology we can save lives.  If this tornado had occurred just 20 years ago, many more people would have died.  It is because of storm chasers, well trained and quick acting meteorologist and the cooperation and communication we all had with each other and with local law enforcement that so many residents of Greensburg are still with us today.  The more we chase, the more we learn.   

On behalf of our team, I would like to voice my personal appreciation to the other storm chasers who were also in Kiowa County during this event and did everything that they could to communicate with warning officials in the Dodge City WFO and even went beyond their call of duty and helped search for people who were trapped by the structures that collapsed around them after the storm had passed.  I don't want to name people directly, because I would surely forget someone and there were many.   It's storm chasers like them who make us all proud.

- Brian Barnes