There were probably over 100 storm chasers trying to get video of the tornadoes in Oklahoma and Kansas on Monday, and you've probably seen some of their work online this week. I want to point out two videos that show the incredible fast movement of tornadoes up close which I think is something that storm chasers and the public both underestimate. When you think about taking the Red Cross dual advice of both staying in, and getting out of your car, you probably picture a large tornado moving slowly towards you. But these videos show up-close encounters with smaller, more nimble tornadoes with multiple vortices that come out of nowhere.

First, Reed Timmer and crew from TornadoVideos.Net (and Discovery Channel's Storm Chasers) find themselves (again) at the right (or wrong, depending on your point-of-view) place and time. Queue up timestep 1:06 in the video when a tornado suddenly rushes past just to their right, surprising them because they were looking forward.

Next check out Andy Gabrielson of FindTheTornado.com in this video, specifically note (@ 1:01)* when multiple vortices form, then (@ 1:25) when one of them swings down suddenly out of nowhere like something from the movie Twister. If you're in a car, there's no planning for that!

*Sometime during the few seconds after this, veteran storm chaser Jim Leonard's chevy suburban was hit by the tornado ahead of Andy, blowing out all of the windows with winds over 100 mph. He said on Facebook that it was the scariest chasing experience he has ever had (which, since he has been chasing TYPHOONS in addition to tornadoes for over 50 years, is pretty darn impressive). He did have a video camera running but "is letting it dry out first."

And yes, there were other videos where people, accidentally or on purpose got themselves too close and claim that the tornado moved over the top of them. Since all you can see are video cameras jostling around and looking at the floor, there's no way to be sure whether that really happened, and I'm not featuring those pictures here. If the tornado really moved over them, they probably wouldn't have ended up rightside-up; there are plenty of ways to get your car damaged by just being near a tornado.

People have started to ask the question of whether or not 2010 will be the season where a chaser gets seriously injured or killed. Although no chasers have ever been killed by storms, they have been killed in the field. Just due to the high number of people out there, especially first-timers and those who are inexperienced, the situation would seem to be a ticking time-bomb. Remember that they have an tornado-armored car; the others listed here are not as lucky. I think a chaser casualty may happen in 2010, and it may well be from one of these small, unpredictable tornadoes (or lightning) as opposed to a monster F-5 that is easier to see, and obviously dangerous enough to get away from.

P.S.: I didn't see any but I have little doubt there were some fake tornado photos floating around from this event, and there was even a fake hail damage photo that was forwarded around by the Weather Channel. I don't know what debris hit that car, but it wasn't hail because there are no smaller dents and hail was only reported to 2.75" yesterday (and if the photo was taken Monday, there were only 3 reports of hail between 4.0 and 4.75").

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