It was quite a day of chasing storms on Friday for a severe storm tour group led by Paul Botton, who lives just outside of London, England. Botton says he has been leading such tours in the United States for over 20 years in May and June to witness such storms throughout “Tornado Alley”. He said his guests are mainly Europeans who don’t normally witness such weather. Some do it as a “bucket list”, some for such special occasions as birthdays.
He says they started in Colby, KS on Friday and targeted the Burwell area for what would appear to be the start of storms around 1:00pm.
Their first encounter was a twister near Ericson that was a remnant of a larger one near Spaulding.
The second was a wedge tornado.
They encountered a brief tornado near Pilger as their final intercept.
Botton says his tour group was a mixture of “returning guests” and those they call “chase virgins” who had never seen this type of weather before. He says one guest was so excited at a tornado sighting he nearly put his fingerprints into the back of the seat. Botton noted they were well in control of tornado encounters while maintaining safe distances from them
Botton says the storms were more severe than was expected. He says “a large moisture surge” into the area took it from being a “Cold Core” event with storms and weak Tornadoes to Supercells with “Violent Tornadoes” real quick.
