Saturday, July 18, 2009

A night of near misses - and one that didn't

I found myself watching an episode of "Storm Chasers" on the Discovery Channel tonight. The series follows groups of storm chasers through spring in Tornado Alley...some trying to gather scientific data that will help researchers and meteorologists better understand tornadoes and the conditions that create them......and some just trying to capture video and photos that will draw large numbers of hits to their Web sites.

This particular episode struck close to home, because it was in late May in Kansas last year. The Friday before Memorial Day, when tornadoes touched down awfully close to Quinter - the small town next to I-70 in northwest Kansas where my oldest brother, Don, lives. I remember blogging about those tornadoes - one of which hovered in the sky and passed over I-70 and Quinter before finally touching down north of town. Talk about a close call....

Later that night, a tornado touched down in Kiowa County and seemed headed right for Greensburg...which had been decimated by an F5 tornado just the year before. Thankfully, it fell apart prior to reaching Greensburg.

Hearing the tornado sirens go off in the wrecked town that Greensburg largely remained was particularly chilling. As threatening as the clouds appeared, the poor souls of Greensburg had to be shaken to the core as those sirens blared, given what they had been through the previous May.

I was glad to see the researchers check out farm damage north of Quinter the next morning, to remind viewers of what tornadoes can do. There was something important missing from the episode, however: perhaps 50 miles east of Greensburg, on that stormy Friday night, a couple from Colorado was struck and killed by a tornado as they drove east toward Wichita. Driving through a storm in the dark, they probably never knew what hit them.

It would have been wise to mention the fatalities, to remind viewers what can happen when tornadoes strike.

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