Kossack Leftcandid has been a stormchaser for years. A couple years ago, I had been talking with him about the fact that I had been born and raised in Kansas and while I had seen funnel clouds, I always missed seeing tornadoes that came into the area. We went chasing tornadoes in 2015 by driving up to Nebraska, chasing this storm system.
We wound up missing a tornado by just a few seconds — we drove around a hill and during that time the tornado touched down and retreated towards the clouds. We saw a little “rope” just before it disappeared. The drive home was a mixture of elation at how close we came, mixed with how disappointed we hadn’t been successful. The night sky, however, was full with a terrific light show.
Monday morning, Leftcandid texted me saying if I wanted to go storm chasing with him, we’d need to leave by noon. I recharged my camera battery, packed some snacks and met him. We were going to take his truck and I didn’t mind. I wasn’t anxious to have my SUV get pounded by hail, picked up by a tornado or have a few hundred extra miles on it. Besides, if I wasn’t driving, I could look around.
The storm systems were building along I-25 from Fort Collins, CO north past Cheyenne, WY. Our first destination was Cheyenne, expecting the storms to move north. We reached there about 1:30 or so and went to the public library cafe to borrow their internet and get re-situated.
For anyone who might be interested, we used the National Weather Service radar website at www.weather.gov to give us up-to-the-minute radar reports — rain, wind direction, tornado warnings, etc. We could click on Denver, Cheyenne, Scott’s Bluff — between them all we could track the systems. Then, while driving, we used the Android apps for mapping, navigation and helping find food and wifi spots. Don’t forget your portable battery chargers and a multi-port car charger so that multiple phones can be charged while driving. Good old fashioned atlases are also very helpful, since they’re much larger than the phone screen, though they don’t have the live updates as to what your location is.
Leftcandid judged that we were too far south to pursue the northernmost storm (it was moving about 30-40 mph away from us and over mountains). It would take us a long time to catch up to it. Instead, we headed east to meet the storm cells from Fort Collins, which was headed NE towards the junction of Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska. The cells were already being tagged with tornado warnings because radar was seeing rotation in the clouds. Hail was reported up to two, and then three inches in diameter.
We followed I-80 east into Nebraska. At route 17, just south of Bushnell, we headed south for a few hundred yards. We were encouraged to see this truck —
since it meant we were in the right location. These guys have the tech to know where they need to be. Leftcandid and I were going on his intuition. We also saw a few other radar units, vans with storm chasers, and a number of folk who may have been storm chasers or just locals out to see the storms.
When we saw the storm continuing to head north and the OU truck leave, we figured it was time as well. We headed east on I-80 a bit more to the exit for Kimball, with highway 71. We headed north a bit, looking for roads to keep us in front of the storm. While we were driving, I was paying attention to the storm.
I noticed a funnel cloud coming down from the far side of this cloud. We hurriedly pulled off the road and got out the cameras.
When both tornadoes had pulled up into the clouds, we drove a bit farther north. We were going fast enough we missed a dirt road to the right, which proved to be a fateful decision. By the time we parked, we were very close to the storm.
We were too close to the storm. I got out of the truck to take pictures and began to get nervous as I saw clouds swirling down towards me. We were in the downdraft and the winds started blasting at 60 mph or so, picking up dirt clods, branches, stones and other debris and hurling it at us. Leftcandid was parked facing north, so his side of the truck was facing the wind. To get under cover, I started trying to get him to open my door (he had to open it from the inside) and as he turned to comply, his driver’s side window blew inward, covering him in shards of safety glass. I got inside and we proceeded to get out of Dodge. We drove hurriedly about a quarter mile south and then pulled off to look back at the storm.
We picked the glass out of the window frame, cleared most of it out of the interior of the car and started calculating how long to drive home. We decided we’d seen enough to satisfy us so we headed to town for food.
We ate at “The Diner” just off Interstate 80. They had The Weather Channel on to follow the progress of the storms. We happened to be sitting across from the Sheriff’s office dispatcher, who had some stories to tell from the various deputies who were out taking care of people during the storms. We went from there down some non-Interstates all the way to Denver. The air was warm, dry and much calmer than under the storms.
If you have specific storm memories, it would be fun to read some below. If you have suggestions to share, or you would like ideas for how to do your own storm chasing, feel free to post those as well.