….but WeatherData Chief Executive Officer Mike Smith said he doesn’t blame reporter Greg Jarrett and cameraman Ted Lewis for that. The broadcast journalists earned national attention for taking shelter beneath an underpass on the Kansas Turnpike as a tornado bore down on them in the Flint Hills on April 26, 1991.
A portion of the video can still be found on YouTube, and it was featured on last week’s episode of “Shockwave” on The History Channel.
Considering the circumstances, Smith said, their choice seemed reasonable at the time. Debris was raining down as they raced along the turnpike between El Dorado and Cassoday attempting to escape the tornado. When it became obvious they could not outrun the twister, they climbed up under an overpass.
Two things saved Jarrett, Lewis and others who took shelter there that day, he said: the unique box shape of the undergirders of the bridge, which provided a shield from the wind and debris, and the fact that the center of the tornado passed perhaps 40 yards from the underpass, sparing them its strongest winds.
Several people have died copying what Jarrett and Lewis did in the years since then, however, and meteorologists - Smith among them - urge folks to stay away from bridges and overpasses when a tornado threatens. The bridges tend to act as a funnel that collect debris — right where people have been taking shelter.
A common misconception is the tornado that nearly hit Jarrett and Lewis is the same one that hammered the Wichita metropolitan area earlier on the same day. It wasn’t, Smith said.
One particular supercell thunderstorm spawned four tornadoes that day, he said: The deadly EF-5 monster that decimated Haysville, Wichita and Andover was the third, while the tornado that threatened Jarrett and Lewis was the fourth.