As I posted on the main page of my website, extensive damage across the Kansas City area was experienced during the early morning hours of May 2, 2008.
There were a couple of rounds of severe weather to hit the area, but by far the biggest impact was during the second event. A squall line formed in association with a cold front, and went on to create what is known as a Bow Echo on radar. Often these bow echos are associated with much higher winds, and widespread straight-line wind damage. Due to the intensity of this one, a couple of tornadoes also formed up, one near Liberty, MO, which caused the above damage and was rated at EF3 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale.
Winds in excess of 80 mph were generated within this line. According the the NWS, this line engulfed some other storms ahead of the line and also generated tornadoes in the area.
You can see more of their ongoing assessment, as well as more damage pictures on their website.
Written by David on May 2nd, 2008 with no comments.
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Despite my reservations about the SW component to the 850 winds, several supercells managed to get going across OK, along with a couple in KS and even more in to ND and IA.
From the images I have seen so far, Van DeWald captured the most visually stunning images (above) of the day. Give me a dust filled tornado any day over one shrouded in rain. He has some awesome video of it on YouTube, but he doesn’t allow his video to be embedded so you’ll have to go check out his channel.
Other chasers managed to pull of a few pretty nice tornado captures down in OK.
My target, had I chased, would have been Wichita, KS. Some cells did form just SE of there, but kept trying to get linear. OK seems, at least for me, would have been the better target.
Luckily not a great deal of damage came from these tornadoes. Three inch hail caused lots of damage and a couple of injuries reported in Midwest City, OK.
During the early morning hours, a bow echo squall line event generated by the cold front impacted the Kansas City area, causing significant damage. I posted a top story on the main website, and will be posted a blog on the more in depth aspects of the weather portion of the event shortly.
Not upset about missing this event, as models continue to try and depict several possible days of severe weather closer to home next week. More on that later…
Written by David on May 2nd, 2008 with no comments.
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