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April 14th, 2012 Plains High Risk


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Interesting that one of the mobile home parks hit hard in Wichita had an underground storm shelter. Mike 'Fire Ants' Seidel said that there were no serious injuries at the park because the residents evacuated to the shelter, more than 75 packed in it.

I wonder how much such a shelter would reduce the liability insurance cost for the owner of a mobile home park, making it more affordable?

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Hmmm...only a handful of deaths with this outbreak? Perhaps there's nothing wrong with the warning system after all. I wonder if the media will showcase that angle for days on end? lolz

KS, OK and NB have their **** together and procedures in place. Not just the NWS but Emergency Management and the public are well rehearsed. If other areas that don'tget hit as often this isn't always the case.

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Does anyone have a high quality radar and velocity loop from the Woodward cell? I was closely monitoring the radar all day but completely missed that storm as it rapidly spun up as the line developed. Frankly, I was monitoring the Kansas cells at the time as I didn't think the line in OK was going to do anything that impressive. I'm curious to see how quickly it started rotating and how strong the signature was before it went through Woodward.

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Does anyone have a high quality radar and velocity loop from the Woodward cell? I was closely monitoring the radar all day but completely missed that storm as it rapidly spun up as the line developed. Frankly, I was monitoring the Kansas cells at the time as I didn't think the line in OK was going to do anything that impressive. I'm curious to see how quickly it started rotating and how strong the signature was before it went through Woodward.

I don't have any images, mainly because all of my obs here are based

solely on the NWS website radars, but I can tell you that the actual

velocity couplet was very small, however very intense. It began to

really strengthen g2g about 5 miles southwest of town. As the tornado

went over the west side of the city, it made a right turn and struck the

mobile home park on the northwest corner. The two most intense

images were when it was moving through town unfortunately. The

reflectivity showed a hook, but the intensity of the storm (i.e. hail)

was not like some of the other storms during the day.

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I don't have any images, mainly because all of my obs here are based

solely on the NWS website radars, but I can tell you that the actual

velocity couplet was very small, however very intense. It began to

really strengthen g2g about 5 miles southwest of town. As the tornado

went over the west side of the city, it made a right turn and struck the

mobile home park on the northwest corner. The two most intense

images were when it was moving through town unfortunately. The

reflectivity showed a hook, but the intensity of the storm (i.e. hail)

was not like some of the other storms during the day.

Yeah, I was working off NWS radars and Wunderground. Thanks for the info. The radar images I've been able to decipher in my own little image collection from last night do show that the cell that dropped it did NOT look like a cell that would drop what will likely be at the very least an EF2 tornado... definitely not a 'classic' supercell, or at least not for more than a few minutes. I'm just amazed how quickly it wrapped up, evolving from a line-segment type storm to that kind of g2g shear in a few minutes, then quickly weakening. I think this storm was the worst-case scenario event for the day; other areas such as Salina and much of Wichita got fortunate, but this particular cell developed quickly after sunset with a rapid ramping up and back down of velocities directly over a large town that apparently had no working sirens at that particular moment (although, of course, sirens are NOT to be solely relied upon, regardless of the situation). The NWS did an excellent job with the warnings for the cell though, as they had very little time to act on it based on how sudden it was. I just wish that spin-up had happened just a few miles west of where it did, and it would have probably been just a passing side-note in this event.

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Wow awesome video. How powerful do you guys think that is? f3? Also what was up with Salina in the path of 3 Tornadoes! All lifting up before hitting the town, they were definitely really lucky yesterday!

The base is spinning very fast, thats usually how you can get some idea how strong they are, that thing looks like an EF5 on the current scale but probably a strong F3 or weak F4 on the old scale, had it been a 5 the pavement on that road should have been stripped.

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I don't have any images, mainly because all of my obs here are based

solely on the NWS website radars, but I can tell you that the actual

velocity couplet was very small, however very intense. It began to

really strengthen g2g about 5 miles southwest of town. As the tornado

went over the west side of the city, it made a right turn and struck the

mobile home park on the northwest corner. The two most intense

images were when it was moving through town unfortunately. The

reflectivity showed a hook, but the intensity of the storm (i.e. hail)

was not like some of the other storms during the day.

Small but important note here: that's probably because KVNX has serious beam blockage to its WSW, and the city of Woodward is right near the middle of the worst of it. The storm this past Monday which dropped softballs on the city showed up as 45-50 dBZ on KVNX at the time, if I remember. Definitely something to keep in mind when watching storms in NW OK.

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warning on a few bad words lol my friends first tornado who got excited, will have great rope tornado video later

lol awesome video man....your friend Ryan would basically be me if I saw this thing.

"that is a tor. nay. doo."

What is intriguing me is how many people are driving toward the tornado...in the southeast, this would never occur...most people would pull over. Amazing.

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The base is spinning very fast, thats usually how you can get some idea how strong they are, that thing looks like an EF5 on the current scale but probably a strong F3 or weak F4 on the old scale, had it been a 5 the pavement on that road should have been stripped.

??

Re: the Twistex, Samaras vid...

Im not sure we can make conclusions like that from this video, but what I will say is that this tornado looks a lot like the Tuscaloosa tornado from 4/27 of last year... All the little horizontal vortices shooting out from the main funnel, the base of the funnel constantly trying to catch up to the trunk...

Its really, really familiar looking.

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PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE WICHITA KS

318 PM CDT SUN APR 15 2012

...PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT...

PRELIMINARY EF4 DAMAGE WAS DETERMINED NEAR KANOPOLIS LAKE IN

ELLSWORTH COUNTY.

THE ASSESSMENT TEAM IN CENTRAL KANSAS HAS BEEN TRACKING TORNADO

DAMAGE ACROSS THREE COUNTIES IN CENTRAL KANSAS. THE MOST

SIGNIFICANT DAMAGE HAS BEEN NOTED NEAR KANOPOLIS LAKE WHERE A

FARMSTEAD WAS DECIMATED...TREES WERE STRIPPED OF THE BARK AND THE

ROADS WERE SCOURED. THIS AREA IS VERY RURAL AND FEW OTHER

STRUCTURES HAVE BEEN HIT BY THE TORNADO. THEREFORE...THE RATING IS

PRELIMINARY AS THE ASSESSMENT CONTINUES.

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PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE OMAHA/VALLEY NE

220 PM CDT SUN APR 15 2012

...STORM SURVEY RESULTS FOR FREMONT COUNTY IOWA...

THE TORNADO TOUCHED DOWN 2 MILES NORTH OF PERCIVAL IOWA AND BEGAN

A 10 MILE LONG TRACK THAT WENT THROUGH THE TOWN OF THURMAN...WHERE

MOST OF THE DAMAGE OCCURRED...BEFORE LIFTING 1 MILE SOUTH OF TABOR

IOWA.

THE TORNADO WAS RATED EF2 WITH A ONE HALF MILE WIDE DAMAGE PATH

ALONG ITS 10 MILE TRACK.

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PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE WICHITA KS

419 PM CDT SUN APR 15 2012

...PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT...

PRELIMINARY EF3 DAMAGE WAS DETERMINED IN SOUTHEAST WICHITA.

THE ASSESSMENT TEAM IN SEDGWICK COUNTY CONTINUES TO FOLLOW THE

TORNDO TRACK ACROSS THE COUNTY AT THIS TIME...THE MOST

SIGNIFICANT DAMAGE HAS BEEN NOTED ON THE WEST SIDE OF MCCONNELL

AFB AT THE SPIRIT FACILITY AND FURTHER SOUTHWEST INTO THE OAKLAWN

AREA.

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Small but important note here: that's probably because KVNX has serious beam blockage to its WSW, and the city of Woodward is right near the middle of the worst of it. The storm this past Monday which dropped softballs on the city showed up as 45-50 dBZ on KVNX at the time, if I remember. Definitely something to keep in mind when watching storms in NW OK.

That's why Vance's images looked off yesterday, I was trying to figure it out all day.

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That was us and here is the link to our video. We were stuck in Wichita and we were trying to get East ahead of the storm and lost radar data and were essentially driving blind. Definitely one of the most scariest moments of my life. Very thankful we came out in one piece. The tornado strikes our vehicle and us at about 7 minutes into the video and then we believe a possible satellite area of rotation/tornado strikes us after the large tornado. This video was shot with the go pro that had been recording on the roof of the highlander. We had power poles and trees fall 15 feet in front of us, right beside us and 10-15 behind us. Can't even describe how fortunate i feel today and I'll definitely be sitting out on chasing for a week or two. Need a brief break, but lessons well learned also.

Here is our live stream and audio from ChaserTV last night. Skip to about 30 minutes.

http://weather.wdtin...88.flv&type=vod

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