More Andover Tornado Footage, This Time From School And City Hall

Snapshot from surveillance video at Prairie Creek 
Elementary School in Andover, Kansas shows
a tornado sweeping a car out of a parking 
lot on April 29 ,2022

 This is a mean thing to say, but last week's tornado in Andover, Kansas was one of the most photogenic twisters I've seen.  

It would have been better, of course, had it not caused such widespread damage.  Last week, I noted Reed Timmer's remarkable drone view of the tornado pulling apart neighborhoods and lofting roofs high into the air before raining debris over otherwise untouched parts of Andover. 

Now the surveillance video is coming out. The City of Andover has released footage of the tornado hitting a school, and skirting along the edges of City Hall property. Every tornado is unique and dramatic in its own way. This tall, skinny tornado seemed like a destructive oddball, but I guess every twister has their quirks.  It's just that this one was so visible to so many. That made it incredibly well documented.

With the videos, we'll start with the Prairie Creek Elementary School footage, since that's the most dramatic. Spoil: The school suffered severe damage, but no kids were in the school at the time as the tornado came through at about 8 p.m. Friday, April 29.

Here's that video, with some explanation below it.  If you can't see this video on you device, click on this hyperlink

The video:

This is some of the clearest surveillance video of a tornado I can remember.  It also illustrates why the wide open property around schools, and the larger rooms within schools, are not the place to be in tornadoes. 

It also shows why it's important to take shelter well before the tornado gets to near where you are. During the first 25 seconds of the video, we're waiting for the tornado to get there, but already, dangerous flying, fast moving debris is raining down.  Then the tornado hits, and quickly moves on to trash a YMCA building across a field. 

A second view, which looks like the front entrance to the school, starts just over one minute into the video. Although this footage turns pink for some reason, you can clearly see the lone car in the parking lot in the upper left of this segment take flight and exit stage left.  

A screen grab from surveillance video of a tornado 
trashing an elementary school lunch room in 
Andover, Kansas last Friday. 

There's another view of what I believe to be a different  viewed from a different angle at about 1:40 in to the video just disappearing as it's blown off to the right. There's an even clearer view of this car getting blown away.

The lesson here is, don't be like those storm chasers that sometimes try to drive into tornadoes. The car you're in can just turn into another airborne missile in a tornado, and you don't survive that. Nobody was in these two particular cars in Andover, fortunately. 

The last part of the video shows a neat and tidy lunch room getting trashed as a glass wall in the back caves in. 

The second video taken from Andover City Hall is a little longer and you can skip ahead during it if you are in a hurry. It shows a benign looking funnel in the distance. But it gets more and more menacing as it draws closer. 

The video is an illustration on how you should not be "confident" a tornado is going to miss you because of its initial direction.  As you can see it sort of goes right to left on the screen in this somewhat speeded up video.  At about three minutes into the video it looks like the tornado will miss City Hall by a wide margin.

But them its path curves back toward the building. It ultimately just misses the structure, but you can also again see how dangerous it is just to be near a tornado. The air fills with debris. Trees in the parking lot snap off and get sucked into the tornado'a maw. 

Click on this link to watch this video, or view below: 

Wild Kansas Tornado Destroyed Part Of Neighborhood; Drone View Is Incredible

In a still from Reed Timmer's fascinating drone video
of a tornado in Andover, Kansas last Friday, the roofs
of three adjacent houses get sucked up into the 
twister almost simultaneously, center of frame. 
Click on the image to make it bigger and
easier to see.

 Parts of it have been on the news for a couple days now, but you should really check out famed storm chaser Reed Timmer's drone view of a powerful tornado that struck suburbs of Wichita, Kansas on Friday. 

This tornado was different from many you see in the media. Often, tornadoes are partially or fully wrapped up in rain, making them a little difficult or just impossible to see. 

This one, like some you see in the Plains was in clear air. It even looks like the sun was shining on it. 

We also think of major tornadoes as these big, black, wedge-shaped things that roar across the landscape. This was a tall, skinny one that one make an untrained eye think it wouldn't be capable of much damage.

Narrow tornadoes can be incredibly dangerous, though.  The one in Timmer's video shows how powerful they can be.

As horrible as this tornado was, it's fascinating to watch.  I'm making you click on the links to watch it so the clicks go to Timmer's YouTube channel. I don't want to steal his thunder, so to speak. 

Like many strong tornadoes, this one had what are known as suction vortices, which are essentially tornadoes circulating within the main tornado.  Suction vortices are very often what cause the most damage in a tornado.

At the start of the video, you can't really see these suction vortices until they hit a house or building as it mows through Andover, Kansas.

Then the debris and dust makes these vortices obvious.  You can also see the powerful lift this tornado has, lifting roof after roof straight up into the air. At one point, the roofs of three adjacent houses take off almost simultaneously. 

At about 40 to 50 seconds into the video, you see the funnel up above and those suction vortices wrecking the neighborhood. One of those vortices coils up, looking a bit like a curly fry. 

 The first couple of minutes of the video were a wise choice by Timmer, who gives us the same shot three times, one close up, one at mid range and one at further away. This gives you the full perspective on how the tornado behaved in and around Andover. 

This video is going to be studied by meteorologists and structural engineers for years to come. Suction vortices come and go quickly, and I'm sure scientists will be examining this video to learn more about them. 

Those suction vortices are sneaky, too, and should give pause to any storm chasers who want to get too close.  At about 2:47 in, you see the tornado doing its thing, and suddenly, a building and electrical equipment to the left get sucked into the maelstrom. That was a suction vortex that was invisible until building debris got entrained into it. 

Late in Timmer's drone video, you have distant shots of the tornado. You can see how tall, thin, and yes, graceful it was, in a weird sort of way. 

The National Weather Service office in Wichita, Kansas says the tornado was an EF-3 with maximum winds of 165 mph. But you can see from the video how the suction adds to the destruction.  Miraculously, the tornado caused only three injuries and no deaths. Well-timed warnings by the National Weather Service kept the casualty count low. 

The maximum width of the tornado was 440 yards, which isn't huge. And that damage swath encompasses the outer edges of the tornado, where damage wasn't as bad. Judging from videos of the damage, the intense winds that destroyed homes were encompassed an area only about 300 yards wide. 

If Andover, Kansas makes you think of another tornado disaster, you're right. Friday's tornado hit on just two days after the anniversary of an even worse twister that hit Andover and nearby McConnell Air Force Base. 

That tornado, on April 26, 1991 was an F5 that killed 17 people. That 1991 tornado was a much more "traditional" looking one that appeared as a dark wedge that swept through the town.