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Chaser: Nathan Withrow

On May 10, 2008 a very violent tornado formed to the Southwest of Chetopa, KS.

This was a special day for me because hours before the storm, I graduated from a community college. I knew that there was a threat for severe weather, but had no idea what was about to unfold in front of my eyes and for others.

It was a day of celebration and a day to sit back and think about my goals next in life. Little did I know that a few hours after I got back home, that all hell was about to break loose. The storm prediction center had my area in a slight risk for severe weather that day. But the atmosphere was unstable, but not just unstable, extremely unstable.

when the storms started to fire, they blew up east of Wichita in Southern Kansas. A few cells became severe producing large hail but were disorganized. As the cells moved eastward they entered Southeast Kansas where the atmosphere was really unstable, and there were three key air masses in play here. A cold front, warm front, and dry line. This is called the triple point where all three air masses meet at a point.

The minute the cells crossed the triple point they began to rotate! These were small supercells. The southern most supercell started to drop hail over my area. I went outside and looked up at the sky and had a weird feeling that something was about to happen. I went back in the house and started to listen to the local weather report on TV and they said that the northern most cell was becoming tornadic! Shortly after, the tornado sirens went off and I went outside trying to tell myself should I stay or go out and see what was going on. I took off towards the northern supercell because that is the one that was producing the possible tornado, but before I could leave town I looked behind me in my car and I saw what it looked to me to be a funnel extending down. I turned around and drove back into town, and now I was facing it, looking at it. My emotions started to go wild and what I thought I was looking at was indeed a tornado forming. I drove outside to an area which would be good to get a open view of it. Before I saw the tornado, I saw the funnel then I had to wait again until I got out to the country. Before I seen it again I already knew that there was a tornado on the ground, and my adrenaline picked up. Finally I got out there and just as I made it out there, the tornado touched the ground. I never saw this in my life so I had mix emotions of seeing a tornado, and seeing one outside of my hometown. So the rest of the story is shown here in this amazing video, and I couldn’t ask for a better graduation present!

Website: http://www.youtube.com/stormchasernathan

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