5-22-08 Video

The ending..... As we were trying to escape, looked like a wall of rain just before. It was beating us by a scary margin that seemed unreal, as we moved east out of Wakeeney at 80 mph. We ended up being on the outer edge of an EF-1 tornado, that did some damage in Wakeeney. In the video, I say,"This is not good, then say "we're good." Not wanting to alert the others and make them panic, I said it was outflow, but you can clearly see we are driving east, and the strong inflow is moving west. What we didn't film, was the intense wind shift prior, or the "wall." Many other chasers/mets can vouch for this insanity at dusk near Wakeeney. We didn't see it in our rear view, and the idiot with the light bar truck did 20 mph and flipped his lightbar on when we were all hit. I guess that he thought it was going to save him. While they were moving slow through this situation, I passed them in the right lane and wished them good luck.

I'll never forget that sudden wind shift, which at one point, I swear...it stopped for just a split second. The, "Oh shit, this isn't going to be very fun" shifting of the winds! We talked about it with chasers we knew in Hays afterwards, and they still looked pretty shaken up about it, as we were too!

Chasing the less favorable target today, probably from CNK to HLC, if it's too crowded with chasers, then further south for something more conditional, NE of DDC. So if you are a chaser and are reading this, please go to Iowa and Nebraska! I can't ignore the beautiful UL divergence at 100 knots, with a southerly llj at around 40 knots at 0z.