Archives for June 3, 2008

Heading north out of Dighton, Kansas, on Friday, May 23, we pulled aside to see what was happening with the wall cloud we had first encountered on the west side of that town. Though rotating rapidly, the cloud had moved very slowly, taking an almost stationary position for quite a while. But evidently the steering winds finally grabbed hold of it, because it suddenly decided to pack up its bags and head north at a pretty good clip. We skedaddled out of Dighton and took off after it.\r\n\r\nWhile it was hard to tell at the time, from the following video it appears that the wall cloud may have put down a tornado that rapidly wedged out. This checks out with another video I”ve seen on YouTube of a wedge near Dighton that same day, which most certainly was the same storm from a different angle.\r\n\r\nAt any rate, while you can see the rapid cloud motion on the outskirts of the mesocyclone and a suspicious, rain-wrapped lowering to the left of the screen, keep your eyes on the center. A sudden, nearby spin-up surprised the bejeebers out of us by blowing the roof off a small building roughly 150 yards away. I got video of it, but so did fellow chaser Mike Kovalchick, and I like his better. Check it out. We were in the white Suburban. That”s Bill in the baseball cap.