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North Central Kansas | Went to McPherson, KS for my wifes family reunion Saturday. It had rained at home but on the way down the clouds lifted and the sun came out. While at the reunion I noticed that it was getting pretty dark to the southwest. I storm spot at home so I am kind of a weather watcher and used to having access to radar, communications. I had my cell phone and was able to pull the radar up on it. I could tell by the radar that the storm looked bad but the sirens weren't going off. Brother in law got a call from his son telling him that they were evacuating a show at the local college to the basement because of a possible tornado. As soon as I heard that we got in our van and headed East. The place we were at had no basement. Sirens started going off. Not a good feeling. We got in our van and the radio said the rotation was on the southwest side of town. We went to the east side of McPherson and could see the South end of the wall cloud on the Southwest side of town. We headed East out of town on 56. We got east of Galva and stopped on a side road to see which way the storm was moving. While we were deciding how far East to drive before heading south the TIV (Tornado Intercept Vehicle) from the Discovery Channel program Storm Chasers passed us going east on 56 followed by several chase vehicles. We decided that we probably weren't far enough East. The pictures are taken East of Canton looking back toward Galva and McPherson. Just East of there we headed South to Goessel and back to McPherson. No damage on the East side. Alot of tree and some building damage on the west side of town from what we were told. Didn't go sight seeing to see. There was no Watches out or warnings before this thing hit. The TIV and the Storm chasers knew where to be at. Apparently the National Weather Service didn't. The rest of the people from the reunion went to the college to wait the storm out in the basement. The storm hit before they could get into the building. I could see when we left the park that the clouds above us were rotating. I knew from storm spotting that you always want to be on the southwest side of the storm so that is where we went. We were ahead of the rain. There was a fatality on 56 due to the heavy rain.
Edited by kstate90 6/22/2009 01:44
 (McPherson Tornado.JPG)
 (Mcpherson Tornado 2.JPG)
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Attachments
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 McPherson Tornado.JPG (50KB - 239 downloads)
Mcpherson Tornado 2.JPG (49KB - 240 downloads)
Mcpherson Tornado 3.JPG (49KB - 234 downloads)
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Storm shots from Saturday
