Unbelievable swirling clouds appear to be fertilized by a tornado. This violent, long track tornado packed EF3 tornado force winds over open Kansas country southwest of Dodge City on May 24, 2016. The incredible twister took on many dramatic shapes during its 32 minute life span and destroyed a home near Ensign Kansas. For licensing 4K footage contact hankschyma@yahoo.com
At 5:09 PM, GOES revealed an exploding thunderstorm initiating near Minneola Kansas. By 5:21, NWS issued a severe thunderstorm warning for this storm and by 5:24 a tornado warning. At about 5:53 the tornado touched down and tracked over mostly open farm land as it grew into a photogenic monster stove pipe with a max path width of approximately 300 yards / 274 meters. As the path of the tornado curved to the northwest toward Ensign, the tornado began to reveal its strength spewing dirt and crops high into the atmosphere and toward the end of it's life, hit a structure verifying EF3 force winds. You can see debris from this structure whirling around the tornado. After 32 minutes on the ground, the tornado roped out at 6:25PM. Two people were critically injured from this tornado outbreak but no fatalities have been reported.
This was only the first tornado of 12 that I witnessed during this unprecedented tornado producing cyclic supercell. Several clutches of twin tornadoes and at one occasion 3 tornadoes were on the ground simultaneously under the storm. You can see these tornadoes in Part 2 of this youtube series.
WEATHER CONDITIONS:
Extreme instability was in place east and southeast of a low centered over the Western Kansas and Colorado border. Near a dry line and outflow boundary triple point, strong heating, ML CAPE from 2500-3000 j/kg, dew points near 70 degrees F and very steep mid-level lapse rates set the stage for splitting supercells with significant tornadoes.