The Season for Severe Weather

I have a rather strange obsession with severe weather. I just love it, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. But even when it does, I think there is nothing quite so thrilling as being a part of a huge weather event. In fact, the first career I ever really envisioned myself participating in was that of a meterologist. Sometimes, I wish I had stuck with that dream, since I love weather so much. Put simply: I dig storms.

Similar to my weather obsession is my natural disaster obsession. Sick, I know, but I can't help myself. The power of the Earth just slays me. I've had this unofficial checklist in my head of natural disasters I've been a part of for as long as I remember. And before I die, I want to 1) fly through a hurricane in one of those chase crafts and 2) go tornado hunting.

Anyways, I was thinking about this, and I realized I've been a part, both directly and indirectly of some good natural phenomena. Thus, a list:

Notable events I have experienced:

9 February 1971: The San Fernando Valley Earthquake.
I was only about to turn three, so I remember very little of this event that occurred. My dad was in Korea for a year-long assignment that year, so we were living in my Mom's hometown of Alhambra, California. At 6:00 in the morning (why do big earthquakes usually happen right before dawn?) the L.A. area was hit with a 6.6 earthquake. Mom remembers the dog going crazy right before it and then throwing me and my brother in the middle of her bed while things were shaking around us. I have no memory of the event itself, but I do have a memory of going out the back door of our apartment, through the Kitchen, after the event in the early morning and hearing absolute silence. This memory may have been after one of the aftershocks, of which I also remember nothing, but the memory I do have of going outside was in faint daylight.

24 December 1982: The Great Colorado Christmas Blizzard.
I was 14 and my family was hosting a Christmas family reunion of my California relatives (okay, my only relatives--I only have three first cousins). That Christmas season was a typical one for Colorado Springs: mild, temperatures in the high 40s and low 50s and very, very brown. I remember my Aunt Sandy that Christmas having this refrain, continually asking, "where's the snow?" Well, it came. Hard.

On the evening of the 23rd, we all went to Seven Falls in my hometown and saw the Christmas lights on the waterfall. As we were driving back, these huge snowflakes starting drifting down innocently from the sky. Aunt Sandy was in the rumble seat of our old Matador station wagon, and all she could keep doing was pointing up at the sky and mouthing, "look at the snow!" For those of us used to Colorado weather, however, it wasn't a great sign: any time you start a snowfall with huge, conglomerate snowflakes (in this case, the size of silver dollars), you know a big event is about to hit: it means there is a lot of moisture in the air.

The next morning I remember waking up to a white out on Christmas Eve. It was a crazy blizzard. In fact, over two feet of snow fell with winds of about 50 mph. It was way beyond the norm for Colorado. It shut down the entire front range, and my uncle wasn't able to make it out as was planned. And my mom had the house heated at about 90 degrees to appease her father, who came from Florida, and constantly bitched about the cold. The day after Christmas I seem to remember an emergency in that I think everyone ran out of booze. I remember the neighborhood getting together for a booze run on snowmobiles in search of an open store. It was pretty funny. Later, the whole street came out to help eachother clear paths to the street on their driveways, only to have the plows finally come around and dump it all back. For a kid my age, it was Nirvana. For the adults, I'm sure it was a giant pain in the ass.

December 1990: The Great Arctic Outbreak.
I was in my fifth year at Kansas State, and it was around finals time. This huge arctic outbreak came down from Canada and the center of the country was deep in way-below-zero temperatures. For a week in Manhattan, it was below zero, and got to a point that for several days it was about 25-below. I remember walking to my last final in that cold and my beard freezing over on the way; I would have it drip water on my final the rest of the morning. That evening, some of us decided we wanted to go have some drinks to celebrate. I had a particular crush on this one girl, so I said yes. I remember piling on the layers of long underwear and other clothes to fight the cold. When we got to the bar, I was astounded to see sorority girls still going out in mini-skirts. When it was 20 below! The day after, I drove home in similar cold. The valve of one of my tires froze open and I lost all the air in it. I had to keep filling it up every 30 miles until it finally warmed up enough to close in Western Kansas. But then, I started filling up with lesser-octane gas as Colorado and Western Kansas have lower "regular" standards, and my carburator started to freeze up. It was a long trip. Finally I got back to the front range, which was a good 20 degrees warmer than Kansas was.

6 June 1990: The Limon Tornado.
I was moving from my roommate Mike and my house on Ratone Street in Manhattan to a new one on Quivera Circle. I had gone home to borrow my Dad's old Toyota truck to help with my moving. Once we got all of our stuff into the new house, it became clear that the old residents we were replacing weren't quite ready to move out, yet. Instead of waiting around, I decided to take my Dad's truck back and have a couple of weeks of vacation in CO.

The day of June 6 was a weird one for me driving back to Colorado. The entire way going west, I had a tailwind, which never happens in Kansas. It was also really, really sticky that day with the humidity. But the skies were clear and I didn't think much of it for the first half of the trip. When I got to my refueling stop in Colby, Kansas, however, I noticed on the western horizon the tops of some cirrus clouds. The weather guy in me recognized that this was the top of a huge thundercloud building, and I thought to myself that there was a big storm brewing. Fortunately, it looked like it was to the north of me, so I should miss it.

As I drove into Colorado, I increasingly got under this massive storm. But it was still to the north of me, even if I was in its shade. Weather guys know that the big thunderstorms almost always this time of year go from the southwest to the northeast, so I wasn't worried. As I continued to drive in Colorado, the storm kept getting bigger and bigger as I neared it. Eventually, just a few miles to the north of me on the interstate, a ferocious storm was pouring rain and lightning. I started to wonder if I was going to have to "punch the core" after all.

There is a turn on I-70 that you go around and there you can see all of Limon, Colorado in the valley below. Limon is where you turn off if you are going to Colorado Springs, to the southwest. As I made this turn, I noticed the storm just to the north of me had a strange hook that when around the city, but stopped where I was going, which was in clear air, though there was a strange looking cloud in that vicinity. I was very relieved: I wasn't going to have to go through the storm. I got off the interstate and started driving down Highway 24 toward home. And toward this weird cloud.

One thing about Eastern Colorado is that there are no trees. It is the high plains, and you can see for miles and miles and miles. That makes it good weather watching country. About five miles out of Limon, I was still fascinated by this weird cloud that was immediately in front of me, but because of the topography of that area, I couldn't see the bottom of it. Finally, going up this incline, getting closer and closer to the cloud, the weather guy part of my brain finally clicked in and I connected the dots. Big storm. Hook of weather in the southwestern flank. Weird, low cloud. I was driving into a wall cloud, and that meant . . . I was driving into a tornado!

I pulled the truck over to the side of the road. What to do? I was excited and scared at the same time. I decided to turn the truck around and wait the storm out in Limon in shelter. But I must have driven only about a half-of-a-mile when I realized that if I was southwest of Limon and there was a tornado, the tornado was probably going . . . straight towards Limon! I pulled the truck over again. What to do? I decided since I hadn't seen an actual tornado yet, I should pull back around and drive back up the hill. Then, I could see what was going on and make a decision. I only hoped the tornado, if there was one, wasn't right over the top of the hill.

Nervously, I started driving up the hill the other way. When I got to the crest of the hill, the creek valley before me stretched out and I could see. A big, huge, fat tornado. Especially for Colorado, whose dry air usually makes tornados rather wussy. This was not a wussy tornado. It was a classic wedge-shape you expect to see more east. I gulped. I did some calculations. Highway 24 was a road that went southwest. Tornados go to the northeast. The tornado was on the north side of the highway. I figured I was pretty safe, so I kept driving, with the tornado in my windshield and my view. It must have been about five miles away.

I kept driving with the tornado in my site. As I drove, it slowly (it seemed to take forever) moved from my windshield to my passenger side window. But it also kept getting closer. At one point, I moved into the updraft of the tornado. Suddenly, the wind started howling at a perpendicular angle to my truck. I figure at this point the tornado was probably about a mile-and-a-half from me. I remember deciding that I had driven too long to die this close to home, so I floored the truck and if a cop wanted to stop me, he could after I outchased this thing. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing so hard that the most I could make that Toyota 4-cylinder go was 75. The tornado kept creeping closer. When it got to maybe a mile or less from me, on my passenger side window (its hard to determine distance on the plains), I decided that if it got any closer, I was going to ditch the truck, because the last place you want to be in a tornado is a vehicle. But, the tornado managed to slip behind me, and I started breathing easier as it went behind me.

I went around another downhill curve, and noticed a van with some guys shooting video. The tornado was now behind me and so I stopped next to them and got out. Turns out they were off-duty weathermen videotaping the tornado. They were having the time of their lives. I looked up and noticed we all were still under the wall cloud, and it was circulating like crazy. I decided I had had enough excitement and got back in the truck and started driving home.

I have to say that that day had the most intense weather watching I have ever had. As I drove from underneath the supercell that produced the tornado I had witnessed, I was watching weather all around me. There was this little cloud that I noticed over Pikes Peak, and I watched it as I drove grow bigger, and bigger, and bigger. By the time I reached Colorado Springs, an hour later, it had grown to a huge supercell east of the city, one that I would later learn had spawned many tornadoes itself.

The sun was shining as I pulled into my home. I found my father working in the backyard. "Hey," I asked, "you haven't heard anything about a tornado hitting Limon, have you?" My father said no, upon which I proceeded to tell him about my journey. Later that night, I was in my room doing some reading when my Dad called down to me from the stairs that I should check out the news. It turned out that the same tornado I had encountered had twenty minutes later ripped through Limon as an F3 and did a shit load of damage. As terrible as it was, I was relieved I had not gone back to Limon to wait the storm out. Fortunately, no one was killed.

I still have my videotapes of the news that night. And, as it turned out, the weathermen I stopped next to made some fantastic video of the tornado. If you look above, you can see pictures of the tornado that look very much like what it looked like to me as I was driving towards it.

I will write about more of my notable weather experiences in a later post soon.