The Big Storm | May 29, 2004 | Southern Kansas Tornado Chase

2024 marks the 20th anniversary of a unique, highly photogenic tornado event in Kansas on May 29th, 2004. Nature and reality overshadowed every faux Hollywood production made about tornadoes on this specific day, all well chronicled here in a freewheeling documentary style. This production is a composite from several hours of raw videotape recorded between Friday, May 28 and Saturday, May 29, 2004.

The lead up to this vivid Memorial Day weekend tornado outbreak followed an incredibly active week across the Plains and Midwest. Beginning on May 22, a series of significant tornado events occurred, primarily across Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. That week's weather pattern was a dream for storm chasers, meteorologists and the severe weather obsessed. For area residents, it was a nerve-racking period of tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, flooding and storm chasers in pursuit of those natural phenomena.

By Thursday, May 27th, another significant wave of upper-level atmospheric energy moved east towards the central Plains. Forecast discussions painted a significant tornado event, specifically across Kansas for Saturday, May 29th. As it was a holiday weekend, climatological peak for tornado activity and in between most college semester terms, there were A LOT of people out and about! Three specific focus zones from north-central Kansas, southern Kansas and north-central Oklahoma fortunately aided to spread out any mass storm chaser convergence.

During that week I was working as a tour guide and driver with Tempest Tours, a storm chasing expedition company based out of Arlington, Texas. The tour groups experienced tornadoes on three of the five days out: May 22, May 24, and May 26. My time with Tempest Tours concluded on May 28th. The day before the "big day" also happened to be the premiere of a natural disaster film, 'The Day After Tomorrow' at a Norman, Oklahoma cineplex. I joined up with a group of meteorology students from the University of Oklahoma to take in the movie for a good laugh. Mike French, then an OU School of Meteorology graduate student, sums up his opinions on that piece of cinema in relation to the anticipated convection 24 hours later.

By Saturday, May 29th, two obvious forecast target zones were evident, one in north-central Kansas near a dry line/triple point, and the other along the dry line within an extreme instability axis along the Kansas-Oklahoma border west of Interstate 35. In anticipation of both targets, a decision to drive from Norman for an overnight stay in Wichita was made the night before to get an early leg up on the day.

Melissa Moon and I teamed up and chased together on this day. We were then both undergraduate students of meteorology and geography respectively; she at the University of Oklahoma and I at Western Michigan University. I had mild ambitions of graduate school at OU in those days, hence the SOM t-shirt in the video, a welcomed gift from her!

By late morning we ventured to the Park City, Kansas public library for updated data and forecasts. No smart phones in this era. Encouraged by the off-the-wall parameters, we grabbed a quick lunch and then met up with another friend and fellow chaser/meteorology student, Tony Laubach. By 4:00 p.m. our trio buzzed up to a Newton, Kansas truck stop to access the only public WiFi hotspot available. Southeasterly winds were sustained at 25 mph at this point and the atmosphere was revving up! While there, we met up with two other OU meteorology students, Kyle Mozley and Chris Nuttall. Together we formed a caravan, linked via HAM radio communications and headed southwest.

While storms to our north did develop first and became tornado warned, three supercells initially formed along the dry line to our southwest near Pratt to the OK-KS border. After some route stepping along the line to the dominant supercell thunderstorm, our group of four, sans Tony whom eventually took another route, observed the evolution of a single, cyclical supercell that produced multiple, highly visible tornadoes of every shape, size and intensity in Harper and Sumner County, Kansas from 7:30 p.m. until just before 10 p.m. We all lost count after tornado number 7! The tornadoes occurred primarily over open terrain, with few structures directly impacted. Our tornado viewpoints are all from Sumner County, Kansas; primarily southwest of Argonia and Conway Springs. For everyone involved, this was indeed THE BIG STORM of the era!

Original videography by Melissa Moon, Blake Naftel and Chris Nuttall. © 2004, 2024 All Rights Reserved. Original music by O.T.E. licensed through Epidemic Sound. Produced and edited by Blake Naftel, February 2024.

A meteorological overview on the May 29, 2004 Harper and Sumner County, Kansas tornadoes via the National Weather Service in Wichita, Kansas: https://www.weather.gov/ict/event_200...