Tornadoes Near Kansas City
A rotating wall cloud that produced a tornado near Lee’s Summit, MO. July 1st, 2015.
Just three days after a tornado in portions of St. Louis, it looked like the Kansas City area was going to be under a tornado threat. Again, storm chasing is thrilling and exciting, but there’s nothing fun about tornadoes moving into densely populated areas. A pair of isolated supercells began to organize by 6 p.m., with one of those thunderstorms centered right over Kansas City. I was coming up from the south and was hesitant to get too close to the city. My hope was that these storms would drift southeast and move away from the metro area.
I approached the tornado-warned cell near Greenwood/Lees Summit and tried to get to a hill with at least some visibility of the storm. it was clear that there was a low, rotating wall cloud associated with this storm. The tornado sirens went off and I stayed in that spot for a while to watch the rotation. After going back and watching video compared to storm reports, it appears that a likely tornado was briefly visible to the north in the video below.
Storms continued to develop into the night with a few brief tornadoes reported. It was not the most ideal area for a chase, but nonetheless, this looks like the start of a string of days chasing across the Plains and Midwest.
Storm Prediction Center tornado (and other severe) reports from July 1st.
