A few people are dead this morning and numerous others are in critical condition following a monster tornado that went through Kansas last night. The small town of Greensburg was hit hard! As I watched the online coverage from KSN last night, I thought back to the storm that hit Maramduke last year. Similar tornado... Similar town... This morning, as the death toll rises in Greensburg, KS; it should remind us how blessed we are to not have lost lives in Maramaduke.
Below are some radar images I grabbed from KAKE last night. The first image is a "classic" hook heading for Greensburg. The second image is the wind data from the storm. Remember, green colors are winds going toward from the radar site and red is wind going away from the radar site. Jay Prater had the area of rotation circled. The third image is when the tornado was ripping through the torn of Greensburg. *** I had to edit the away/toward comment*** The brain was not in gear! Thanks John
Kansas has another long day ahead of them. The SPC has issued a "High Risk" for the Kansas area and tornado watches have already been issued. For LIVE streaming coverage of the severe weather, click here to go KSN's coverage. Hopefully KAKE will start streaming too. The Chief there, Jay Prater, is a friend of mine from weather conferences AND one of Craig Rickert's long-time best friends. I'd love to watch his coverage, but they were not streaming last night and I doubt they will tonight. If they, do... I'll post the link.
Have a great day,
Ryan
8 comments:
That is one very well defined hook echo, I hope the residents of Greensburg get the assistance they need to start the recovery process and pray the weather stays on their side.
Ryan, that is very interesting about KSN's chief. I watched last night's coverage until almost 2am, and again tonight until I couldn't stand it anymore. I had GRLevel3 on and was on a weather chat that originated from tornadovideos.net (Reed Timmer's site). It was a sick feeling last night to see the Greensburg storm make a left turn right at the city at the last second. It looked like it was going to miss them to the east until then. Someone on the chat said that sudden shift looked like a hook on a bowling ball, how it breaks at the gutter and hooks back to the center. We all knew what we were seeing - at one point, the SRV1 was detecting debris in the circulation. Just awful ... Anyway, what I really wanted to say is that over and over, people were saying what an OUTSTANDING job KSN's storm team was doing. (And they work with only two guys too, right?) So it's no surprise to me that this guy is a friend of yours & Craigs. :) He's a friend of a lot of people right now, I would say.
That is one large wedge tornoado !!! Alot of supercells that develop in a line moving North or Northeast will all the sudden shoot off and go straight East or even Southeast. Supercells don't usally go with the other storms. They tend to go where they please. That's why they are so dangerous.
Jason,
Most of these storms have actually been staying the course. Tornadic storms sometimes turn a little, but don't always bank on that. This storm that produced the EF5 in Greensburg stayed NNE and plowed straight through the state for 22 miles. And all of the storms in Kansas trained over the same area heading NE.
I din't get to see the radar last night. It just seems like The real large supercells will travel a little different than the storms around it.
The radar in Kansas and Oklahoma tonight are unreal. I feel really bad for those folks.
I didn't get to see the radar last night. It just seem like the real large super-cells will travel a littel different then the storms around it.
The Kansas/Oklahoma radar is unreal again tonight. I feel bad for those folks. All the storms tonight are moving NE too.
It is miraculous that nearly everyone in Greensburg made it through that tornado alive. The aerial shots are so sad. I just saw the self-proclaimed "weather weinie" from the Dodge City N.W.S. who put out the early warning being interviewed on Good Morning America. He was their angel that night.
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