Friday was a day of mixed emotions. We stopped to shop at Walmarts on the way to our target area. I bought a bucket of BBQ chicken wings and a pair of combat shorts. I wont go into detail about the shorts.
We parked up to await the development of storms in a town called Greensburg, Kansas. That town is now a scene of total devastation. A tornado went through last night and wreaked a two mile wide path of complete destruction. Many homeless, injured and I believe fatalities. The emegergency teams here i.e. national guard, police, fire service, Red Cross worked through the night to help or even just find survivors. I believe that the 50 per cent of the town has been wiped out. Rescues were hampered by no power, all 911 lines out of action, power lines and trees or remains of people's houses blocking the roads around the town. We chased that tornado around 11.30pm (now 15 miles north of Pratt, Kansas, for a short while but it was dark and dangerous. The suction of air flowing into what was then still a mile wide tornado was frightening the trees next to where we stopped were bent over by the force of the inflow into the tornado. Our in danger of being blown! over. The tornado one of many last night stayed on the ground for a long time and went through a few more towns (Great Bend, Ellison). We haven't seen any reports yet however I would say that they may have suffered a similar fate to Greensburg. We earlier chased a large super cell in the late afternoon. We met some wild storm chasers "Outlawed Chasers". The cell we chased had a history of producing tornadoes and was over 55,000 ft high. We followed that cell for quite a few miles. It was a fantastic storm and at one point we had to run for cover as large hail rained down on us. We were lucky because when we started to drive away the hail was only golf ball size but it shortly turned to tennis ball size. We had a lucky escape. All in all an interesting day. We ended up in a budget motel in Pratt. The emergency teams worked on through the night at first light this morning I can hear the helicopters out and about.
As far as the weather is concerned yesterday was expected but the climate today is favourable for worse storms than yesterday. Time will tell. It looks like we will not have to travel far. I will not go take pictures of the damage. Too many peoples lives have been affected and so many have lost so much in the short tome the tornado went through. A rough estimate would put the tornado at F4 with F5 being the largest catagory.