Mike and John’s Plains Adventure

Our intrepid local chasers Mike Wilhelm and John Brown hit the road this weekend to capture some Plains tornadoes.

Caught up with Mike last night well after midnight. Several folks on our internal chat had been worried abotu them after the tornadoes clipped Wichita.

Turns out they had been on that tornado family at its inception back in northern Oklahoma. Turns out that as we watched Gary England’s coverage on Channel 9 out of Oklahoma City, John and Mike were on the same storm Val Castor, other News 9 chasers and the helicopter were following.

Mike forwarded these two pictures from near Cherokee, Oklahoma.

The top one is amazing, with the truncated cone and thin elephant’s trunk tornadoes side by side.

The second one, shown below, shows a sinister rope tornado that I suspect was very violent at its base.

Mike shared some of his video on YouTube.

Mike and John were exhausted after a long drive Friday night in which they each saw very little if any, sleep. I am sure they slept in a little before their long drive home today.

I hope they can be on WeatherBrains tomorrow night.
Well done gentlemen!

Category: Headlines, Severe Weather