As I look back over 35 years ago at the first time I saw a tornado, it seems appropriate to look back at how pioneering storm chaser Dave Hoadley (the founder of Storm Track) and I were "in sync" on the same storm many years before I knew who he was and long before the term "storm chasing" entered the vernacular.

Growing up just outside Pratt, Kansas during the early to mid sixties, I was fascinated by severe weather. I spent hours sitting on our three-rail wood fence in the spring and summer watching storms build and grow, mountains of moisture that turned dark and rumbled with thunder as they grew near.

One thing I really wanted to see was a tornado.  I checked out Snowden Flora’s Tornadoes of the United States from the library time after time along with other books that had dramatic pictures of tornadoes.  I waited for months, which turned into years, yet nothing tornadic ever seemed to come close to Pratt (to which I now say, "Thank goodness!").  Then Tuesday, May 25^th of 1965 came along.  Without my knowing until years later, Dave Hoadley, that legendary early pioneer of storm chasing, was only a few miles away.  Maybe his presence nearby was the "karma"  needed for me to finally see a tornado.  More about Dave on this day later.

Our house was on a hill about a mile south of Pratt with an excellent view of the horizon to the west and north beyond the town.  School was out, and with a south wind and humid feel to the air, I had listened to Wichita TV stations talk about possible severe weather.  At mid-afternoon I watched storms build far off to the west from the grassy field behind our house, quietly wishing for them to come our way.  But they were slow doing so, and I heard mom calling me for dinner around 6 p.m.  While we ate the sky seemed to get a little darker from the west, and then the phone rang.  It was our neighbor telling my mom there was a tornado reported just northwest of Pratt!

I went blasting across our backyard (much to my mom’s consternation) to look northward across the grass field.  Sure enough, there it was… a dark cone-like funnel 4 to 5 miles distant beyond the foliage and buildings of Pratt.
It appeared to be "skipping", sometimes touching the ground and sometimes not (though now I know it was likely on the ground the whole time).  I was far enough away to see the structure of the storm, and while I knew nothing about what I was looking at, I strongly remember the large thick updraft that was slowly twisting above the tornado.  What made a big impression on me was the clouds moving in opposite directions… low ones were moving from the east toward the tornado (these were probably inflow), while puffier and sometimes sunlit clouds to my left were moving from southwest to northeast into the storm (these must have been along the flanking line). With the hugeness of it and all the motion and tornado down below I remember it was an awesome sight!

With my family now watching behind me, I could see the tornado was moving northeast and would miss us and the town of Pratt by a significant distance. 
A cloud of debris came up into the tornado as it moved across the Pratt air base north of town (an old World War II facility then used as an airport and for manufacturing businesses).   Visually, the condensation funnel continued to "hop" and "skip" as it moved across the south edge of Iuka, also north of Pratt.  But in reality, the tornado was on the ground the whole time.
 I'm told many people left their suppers, napkins still tucked in place, to watch the tornado from Highway 281 north of Pratt.   Then the tornado became harder to see as it moved away toward Stafford county.  I remember the sun lighting up the storm and seeming to come in under the trailing clouds… I’m sure this must have been the rear flank or "occlusion" downdraft spreading out behind the gust front south and west of the tornado.  As the tornado became invisible in the grayness to our northeast, we all moved back inside to listen to radio for damage reports.

I later found out that the tornado touched down only a mile to the northeast of my father’s manufacturing business located west of Pratt. The next day one of my dad’s employees who had been working late told him how he had walked over to the window to stretch his legs.  Looking south, he was shocked to see this large dark twisting "cloud" move right over the building!  I told my dad that his business, and in particular this employee, had been very lucky.

At the Pratt airport, the tornado destroyed what had been a large bomber hanger now used by a company to make underground gasoline storage tanks. 
My dad drove me to see the rubble of the hanger, and also the many large gas tanks rolled more than a half mile away, taking down telephone poles and power lines.
This left me greatly impressed.  Some houses in the town of Iuka also suffered damage, mainly losing roofs, but there were thankfully only a few minor injuries.  In retrospect, this was not that strong a tornado (Storm Data lists it as F3, while Tom Grazulis rated it F2 in Significant Tornadoes), but it left a lasting impression on me.  It was utterly exciting that I had finally seen a real live tornado, and with this and the deadly Topeka tornado the following year, I was forever hooked on tornadoes and trying to learn as much about them as I could.

Years later, I discovered Dave Hoadley had been only a couple miles away from me that night and taken his first really good photographs of a tornado from the very same storm.   Indeed, his infamous photo of a high contrast cone tornado (see The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Weather, photo 225) was taken less than a quarter mile east of my father’s business, looking north-northeast from near U.S. Highway 54.  How amazing to find that this was the same tornado that sealed my interest in severe weather, captured on film no less by this pioneering storm chaser who was well ahead of his time!  I certainly believe there is such a thing as synchronicity, and it was operating that night in 1965.

A fire that destroyed my parents house in 1977 disintegrated the box which held all my newspaper photos and clippings about the tornado that I had stored away.  But I later found from reading Storm Track that Mr. Hoadley had been on this storm, and in 1993, he was kind enough to share his slides of the Pratt event, along with newspaper clippings and hand plotted maps he had saved.  It was very exciting to get this material from him and to revisit an event that left such an impression on me as a 10 year old.  A few of his images are reproduced here with this article. Thank you so much Dave!

A final note: Thirty-six years later in April 2001, I would watch another large tornado touch down six miles from my childhood home (see http://home.kscable.com/davies1/)

A quick look at May 25, 1965 through modern meteorological eyes.

I think it’s really interesting to go back and look at old severe events through new eyes, using some of the knowledge we have gained in recent years.

The evening of May 25, 1965 had a large 500mb trough located over the Rockies, with strong southwesterly flow in excess of 50 kts coming out across Kansas.
The early evening surface map showed a low and surface front over western Kansas with moist mid-60’s dewpoints nosing into the central part of the state.  Dry air was positioned over the Texas panhandle, impinging on the moist axis from the west.  These elements are all fairly standard features of central Kansas severe weather episodes, with the most impressive element being the SSE surface winds veering with height to very strong southwesterly flow aloft, suggesting the possibility of tornadoes.

The Energy-Helicity Index (EHI) has come into wide use the last few years as one way of estimating potential for low-level shear and vorticity (storm-relative helicity, SRH) available for tilting and stretching by updrafts in an unstable air mass (suggested by convective available potential energy, CAPE).  In the proper setting, this tilting and stretching can generate supercell thunderstorms that may produce tornadoes. By taking upper air soundings from the evening of May 25, and interpolating several levels above ground to grid points spaced roughly 80 miles apart, then combining that information with evening surface observations, we have a crude way to estimate parameters such as EHI across the central plains that evening.
The 0-3 km EHI estimates at 6 p.m. 5/25/65 show a clear axis of enhanced values extending from west central Oklahoma to north-central Kansas, with an area of stronger values over south central Kansas.

Another factor in recent research that seems to have an impact on potential for tornado production is low-level CAPE and the height of the level of free convection (LFC), which is the point where CAPE begins above the ground.  Lower LFC heights (suggesting more CAPE and instability in low-levels) are found to be generally associated with tornado environments, possibly because this may enhance low-level stretching near the ground.  
Estimated LFC heights the evening of May 25 are seen to be lowest across south central and north central Kansas, and southern Nebraska.
A map of tornadoes occurring that afternoon and evening in the central Plains (other tornadoes also occurred in west Texas, Iowa, and Wisconsin) shows the longer track and stronger tornadoes to be generally located close to areas of larger EHI and lower LFC heights shown earlier.   Of more than 30 tornadoes occurring that day, the Pratt tornado was the most damaging and highest rated, according to information from the National Climate Data Center.

An estimated interpolated sounding from the grid point about 80 miles east of Dodge City suggests that the Pratt environment was fairly ripe for supercell tornadoes that evening.   EHI is greater than 3.0, and 0-3 km SRH is greater than 200.  Deep layer shear is more than 50 kts through mid-levels, and there is decent low-level CAPE (at least 60 j/kg) in the profile below 3 km.  These all suggest an environment very capable of supporting rotating thunderstorms and strong vertical stretching.

Dave Hoadley did an excellent job that day anticipating what was to happen without benefit of all this "high tech" meteorological knowledge. Plotting detailed hourly maps at the Dodge City NWS office, he figured southwest and south central Kansas would be a good spot, and headed out early afternoon as storms developed ahead of the western Kansas low and front. He saw a brief tornado near Minneola south of Dodge City, and then followed new action further east near Pratt, which became the main show and one of the defining moments of my childhood.  Imagine chasing with just your eyes and your head… no cell phones, no one updating you, no information other than what you gathered a few hours earlier, and no other storm chasers on the roads!  For people like Dave Hoadley, the late Roger Jensen, and the late Neil Ward, storm chasing and photography was a real and true pioneering skill.