It’s impossible to put into context the meaning of this day and the life lead-up to it. I could easily just pen out that I saw a tornado from my front porch less than two hours after we closed on the house, but that’s not doing it justice. On the other side of that coin, I’m not sure I could put in to words the culmination of everything that went on prior to this day to bring us to this point. So, I’ll give you the semi-abbreviated version leading into it, then talk about the actual “chase” day.
I was faced with a major life decision back in January regarding my job at the Wichita news station. Unfortunately things hadn’t gone very well for me. And despite my best efforts and all the work I put in, it just wasn’t going to work out. After days upon days of mulling and many upon MANY ‘coming to Jesus’ talks, my wife and I decided that I would not stay with KAKE. I gave my notice to resign, and thus began the path to this tornado.
Without boring you with too many details, the moment I made it known to the Universe (or whatever power you choose to believe in) my intention to leave, the path immediately opened. Coincidence after coincidence began to unfold, not just in the steps that were ahead, but really in a setup that started, honestly, probably very shortly after we moved to Wichita. I guess the Universe t-boned me into this path that was all setting this up years back.
The plan (and hope) was NOT to move from Wichita, but I was shopping myself around the country, but a local opportunity in Wichita with AccuWeather was on my back-burner and after a couple days, I went to go apply and a NEW position had posted for a weather reporter, and remote, so maybe we don’t have to move? I was quickly contacted and sent through a series of interviews, the first of which was asking whether we’d consider relocating to Colorado, our former home.
Well, obviously that worked out… after several weeks, I accepted the new position and on May 2, said goodbye to KAKE and ended that particular chapter of weathermanning. My co-anchor and friend, Annette, put together a beautiful tribute which brought me to tears, an accomplishment when you consider how many of those I gave over the last few months. The following day, I was an AccuWeather employee.
With Colorado now our destination, and the news out of our return, the next step in this process was finding a place to call home. My wife and I both unanimously agreed we would NOT rent again, and despite a less than favorable housing market for buyers, our home purchase in Wichita only two years prior set us up to be competitive in a crazy Colorado market. After a unsuccessful long weekend in Colorado house-hunting a couple weeks prior to moving day, we made an offer a home in northern Colorado, sight-unseen in a neighborhood we had family in. Ten days later, we were under contract and amazingly, with only a 21-day closing period.
About two weeks prior to closing day on May 22, we loaded our cars with all our immediate necessities, our five cats, and full hearts knowing we were coming home, and said goodbye to our Wichita home. Thus began the series of rather ridiculous weather signs. We crossed the border into Colorado that afternoon to emerge into an active tornado watch. Two tornadic cells were straddling the interstate, each about 20-plus miles away and anything of interest out of our I-70 view. I gave a brief thought to making a detour with the couple cats I had, but as we were scheduled to see our new home for the first time in person later that evening, I just took the chuckle of the Welcome Home tornado watch and we landed at our temporary hotel home north of Denver several hours later, and finally got to see our soon-to-be new home in person.
The following day, I did go out and chase, and I did go and see a little tornado south of Akron. Another sign, if you will, but you can read about that event on its actual chase log.
Fast forward to June 7… after a little over two weeks living in a single hotel room with my wife, two full PC work-stations, and five amazingly well-behaved and calm kitties, it was closing day.
We had an early afternoon appointment, and after about an hour of signing my name over and over and over again, we were homeowners…
Hey, we’re almost there, I promise… and I’ve only ALMOST teared up reliving this a couple of times…
Well, we had the keys, it was time to go home. Now look, I was pretty checked out of weather. I was aware we had some storm chances, but certainly nothing that even came close to distracting me from the mission at hand. No SPC tornado risk, and just a hint of maybe a boundary that would initiate some super high-based garbage storms.
My only real attention to the weather was just to see if we’d get stormed on trying to unload our POD that was sitting in the driveway awaiting us. Our goal, get ALL the contents of the POD at the very least unloaded into the garage and set up the bedroom so we did not have to sleep in that hotel room that night and get the POD out of our possession before the new month started so we weren’t paying for an extra month of rent. Simple, right?
After closing, Dania went to the house to get situated, and I made a detour to pickup our internet equipment before we converged on the house. It was go time, roughly 4-430pm by this point. The mattress was our first big goal as we had packed the POD so that the bedroom setup would be among the first things out so we could immediately get that set up. A few items needed to be cleared before we made it to that point.
A little after 5pm, we were getting ready to get the mattress out. When we put it in back in Kansas, it was stuffed at the very top, and we thought it would take a bit of work to get it back out as it was literal hell getting it in there. Well, it just slipped right on down and onto the driveway with barely an effort. As Dania and I chuckled over how worked up we got over that, she suddenly gets distracted and I hear words out of her mouth I never thought I would hear out of her…
“Is that a tornado?”
Figuring she was full of it, I didn’t whip around very quickly, giving her a strange look as I slowly turned to see this “tornado”, and sure as shit, there was a funnel cloud dipping out of the storm clouds just to our south. “Huh”, I uttered, momentarily mesmerized, looking at this thing with what had to be the biggest stupid human look on my face. I was exhausted in every way a person could be; emotionally, physically, mentally, and other-ally. And it had been a long, hard few months to get here, and in that moment, I kinda realized, “hey, this is right.” This is the Universe’s way of saying “you’re home”. A nice little funnel from the house.
I let out a sigh, snapped a few pictures on my phone as the funnel just kinda chilled up there. I waited maybe a minute to see if it would touch down, but even in my exhaustion, I figured this was WAY too high-based a storm for this even to have a chance. Dania jokingly (maybe partially jokingly) asked if our home owners insurance kicked in today, to which I replied “I think it is.”
After taking in the moment and shooting a quick video clip for posterity, I returned my focus to the task at hand, that mattress. “What a cool welcome home present”, I thought. Seriously, I didn’t give it a second thought to this going beyond a little welcome home funnel, and believe me, I was going to run away with just the funnel on its own on our moving day. I mean, how cool is this, right? There is literally no way this could get even crazier, right…
Wait for it…
We picked up the mattress, set it up longways, Dania with her back to the funnel and me with my face full of a King-sized mattress. We got a few steps from the driveway to the porch’s first step. When we stopped to get a better handle on the mattress before we’d lift it up the step, I of course peeked around it to see how that funnel was doing… it wasn’t a funnel anymore.
“OH MY GOD, IT’S DOWN!” I exasperatedly exclaimed. I could see a dust column rising up behind the houses, making its way to the end of the funnel. It was a tornado, it was a goddamn tornado I was watching off the porch of the house we closed on less than two hours ago.
You wanna know how you make quick work of a mattress? Well, needless to say, I probably was experiencing an out of body experience. I shoved the mattress AND my wife straight through the front door in one swift, smooth shove. When it got into the open living area, I let go of the mattress, grabbed my wife, and ran us both back outside before the mattress could tip to the floor. I was on auto-pilot. You could’ve riddled me with a hail of bullets and I wasn’t being stopped.
My wife, who was a bit more coherent, paused us to at least close up the house and POD. You know, we don’t know who our neighbors are… they could be thieves, we didn’t know. I don’t recall exactly doing all that, but I know it delayed the departure I wanted to immediately make by a few seconds. I pondered in that few seconds the idea of digging my camera gear out from wherever it was (it was on the premises, but I don’t recall where). But knowing landspouts, and this clearly was, I didn’t imagine this was going to hang out long and I didn’t wanna waste any time trying to find something. I had my phone, and that was enough. We hopped in my car and off we went. So yes, NOW this can officially be considered a chase log.
We had explored the area a couple times prior to closing, but I was very much driving blind. I didn’t know the area roads and what would take me where. So I just went toward it. I took the paved road south out of our neighborhood, and it continued on as dirt beyond the main intersection, but it climbed a small hill which I was hoping was going to offer a better view. My wife, who at this point was much more composed than the Darth Vader mouth-breather of a husband who was behind the wheel with eyes I am sure were as wide as dinner plates, was casually narrating a Facebook Live, bragging about how she was the first of us to spot the funnel, now tornado.
We crested the hill and we got our first REAL view of the tornado, and I was in shock. I could not believe I was living this moment right now.
The road went on another half mile or so before making a hard right to the west. Going straight beyond the curve lead us through a gate, to which we did cross and park just on the other side of as to maintain our unobstructed view.
I called my Mom, who had been along with me for this entire journey. I don’t know exactly how coherent I was to her as I was trying to explain to her that, for real, we were watching a tornado RIGHT NOW. I think I also texted Ed a picture of it cause this was literally the craziest thing I had experienced. I finally pulled myself together enough to take a deep breath. My wife and I were both out in front of the car watching this thing churn away.
You know when you ask the Universe for a sign? I think we’ve all been there. I had come to a huge crossroads in my life, and from the second we chose our path, everything fell into place, both as we went and from things that were setting up unbeknownst to us in the years prior. And it all lead here, to this moment. Less than two hours after closing on our home, barely there an hour, and the Universe finished our journey with this. This was my sign, one that even I couldn’t mis-interpret. We were home, and I knew at that moment we were going to be fine.
So with that load of sap out of way, let me clear my tears and show off a few images I took on my phone during the FREAKING THIRTY MINUTES this thing hung around. This was no baby birdfart landspout, it put on a show! Unofficially, it was the tallest tornado in Colorado history (estimated at about 11,000 feet), and probably the most seen tornado in history as people from as far away as SOUTHEAST DENVER could see this thing off in the horizon. And yet, it was us that had the front row seat. While I have shpeeled out endlessly how cool this was, it unfortunately severely damaged a nearby farmstead along it’s seven-mile path, landing the Platteville tornado an EF-1 rating, so it wasn’t all good.
As the tornado was finally dissipating, we made a little jog to the west to see if there was route south and upon our arrival, it was blocked by local police. By this point, the spout was pretty much over. We did add a couple extra miles getting back east of town when a friend phoned me reporting another was down, but it was super brief and out of our view. By that point, I was pretty content. We had posted our tornado on social media, which of course absolutely blew up as anyone who knows me immediately realized how special an experience this was. News traveled pretty fast, I guess you could say we went viral on this. Not just in the storm chasing community, but in general. It was pretty cool.
We never did finish unloading the POD that evening. We took to that first thing the following morning to ensure the POD was ready to be taken back before the next month started the next day. We did set up the bedroom around me trying to feed images to AccuWeather, brought the kitties over, and spent the first night in our new home on the day we watched a tornado from our porch hours after closing.
It would only be fitting to make my official AccuWeather TV debut on a wonky-ass setup on our back deck with the limited gear I had been able to organize. Dania and I both interviewed with the network as I was introduced to our viewers for the first time as the new AccuWeather Correspondent and Meteorologist.
ACCUWEATHER: Storm Chaser’s Wife Sees Her First Tornado Hours After Buying Home
This was my wife’s first tornado… she’s chased with me a handful of times over the years dating as far back as 2004, but never on a tornado day. While it’s hard to count this as a chase (I mean, we DID drive a mile toward it), I was delighted we were together for this one (and she’s very high on the fact that SHE spotted it first). Given everything we’d been through leading up to this, it was perfectly fitting we’d see this together.
The whole transition from start-to-finish has felt very much as if this was all meant to be. Anyone who knows me knows how much we wanted out of Denver back in 2013. We couldn’t get out quick enough. But when all this started to unroll in late January, it happened quick, and so naturally. And going back to Colorado didn’t mean going back to Denver. But all our friends and family are here, and when that door was cracked opened as this process got going, it was a shocking realization how much we wanted this. It was not an easy path to get to this point; and this all started out of a lot of disappointment and loss. But if there was anything more meant to be than this.. LOL
But to see that journey end this way… I’m not sure I could’ve written a better ending. While the signs were there throughout the entire process, this cemented everything.
So there ya go… that’s the story on this little tornado… I don’t imagine I will ever experience something quite like this again. But for this lifelong tornado chaser, this was only sign the Universe could possibly deliver…
