71 Wichita KS

Date: 12 May 2010

Location: OK/KS Border to Wichita/El Dorado, KS

Chase Partner: Ben Holcomb

Summary: We started out from Steve Miller's house again and targeted the OK/KS border for storms this day. Storms began to fire as we approached Blackwell, OK and we headed west from there. We stopped where we had witnessed the tornado from May 10, 2010 to look at some of the damage and to give the storms to the west of our location time to mature. It looked as though things were turning linear pretty quickly and that dashed our hopes somewhat that we would have a repeat of May 10. Two storms north of us went TOR warned but they looked like garbage on radar and neither of us felt an overwhelming urge to risk a ticket to get north to them. We stopped and shot some video near Anthony, KS, but the cold outflow from the storm pretty much ended our chase. We headed for Wichita and had dinner at Famous Dave's BBQ and then started for Kansas City where I would fly out the next day. While enroute we came across a semi truck that had driven into power lines that were knocked down by a straight lined wind event. The semi drove into the lines and then was catapulted into the position in the pictures below. After sitting there for about an hour another storm coming in from the west went TOR warned and the Kansas State Troopers were yelling at everyone to get out of their cars and get into the adjacent ditch. The storm looked pretty ragged on radar, but was also tracking NW of our location. IMO the Troopers were causing a lot of people to get scared for no reason whatsoever. People were coming to Ben and I and asking us what they should do and ignoring the police. Smart move on their part. We tried to calm people down and tell them that the storm was not going to produce a tornado and if it did, it would track well clear of where we were. Note to any non storm chasing Law Enforcement Officers: Regardless of what you think of storm chasers, we know more than you do about storms. And more times than not we will kindly show you our radar or share ANY knowledge of the storm with you. Yes, there are a few chasers that give us a bad name and cause you a headache, but if you think you know more about storms YOU ARE WRONG. Get over it. In this situation your ego caused a lot of panic that didn't need to happen. More times than not, I have had great interaction with LEO's, but these guys clearly didn't know a scud cloud from a tornado and I wasn't going to argue with them. And the fact that Ben and I were sitting there with two laptops with radar open for people to look at and the officers didn't take advantage of that knowing this tells me that their ego simply wouldn't let them come down to a human level. It just made you look like a jackass sir, while making Ben and I look pretty damn good.

After sitting there for over 3 hours we finally got moving again and headed back south on the turnpike. Another storm popped up to our west and was throwing CG from the sky like crazy. We stopped right there on the turnpike since there was no traffic and took a few lightning pictures. and then rerouted back to Kansas City. Just another crazy day in Tornado Alley.

Special Thanks to Ben Holcomb for making these 3 days of chasing happen and hopefully doing that again soon! You rock!

Linear storm south of Anthony, KS.

Semi Truck impacted by the wind event in Wichita.

A few CG pictures I took along the Kansas Turnpike near Wichita.