Finger on the Weather

….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.

…but they can still be striking to look at.

Here, for example, are a couple of photographs of a landspout that touched down briefly on July 8 in Stafford County near Seward. No damage has been reported. The images are on the National Weather Service’s Wichita Web site, and were photos sent to KSN by residents of the area.

…at Kansas State University are likely to emerge from a presentation by university officials to the state legislature’s Joint Committee on State Building Construction today.

The meeting will be at 1:30 p.m. at the state capitol in Topeka, and is expected to include an update on damage caused by the June 11 tornado, as well as restoration work on the campus.

I’ll try to post information from the hearing as it becomes available.

You may have seen this photo on the Internet or in your e-mail box described as the tornado that hit Manhattan and Kansas State University earlier this month. It’s a dramatic image, and it’s a real tornado.

But it didn’t hit Manhattan or K-State.

I typed the words “tornado,” “lightning” and “photo” into Google and the first link offered by the search engine was this very photograph: taken over Lake Okeechobee back in 1991 by a Fred Smith, according to 2006 blog post on a web site called “The Fishin Dog.”

Going one step further, the Manhattan tornado was rain-wrapped, making it impossible to see clearly. If someone sends the shot to you and claims it’s the tornado that hit The Little Apple, enjoy the image - but don’t buy the story.