00:00take a look at this yeah the tornado you're seeing on your screen was captured by
00:05extreme storm chaser aaron jajak he joins us live this morning from mccook nebraska and you know
00:11uh ariel and ariel and i were talking about it didn't even look real it looked like it was faked
00:16it looked that picturesque and perfect and luckily it was in areas that were
00:22a void of of many buildings and of course void of population
00:30yeah you know that tornado was out in the open nebraska sand hill so beautiful country here in
00:36the central plains and we're still here i'm here in mccook nebraska right now this is part of the
00:40central plains you can see a storm back behind me but yes last night a beautiful tornado formed
00:45uh just north of here uh near wallace nebraska wall fleet nebraska which is just to the south
00:50of north platte nebraska and i arrived uh right up on the west side of that storm right as it went
00:55tornado warned and that little needle came down and you know what i thought we were going to see
00:59a pretty nice tornado what i didn't expect is that we were going to see a nearly stationary tornado
01:04i was on the ground for over an hour about 77 minutes is what i look at back of my footage is
01:09how long that tornado was on the ground for i went through various stages of just a little skinny
01:14tornado uh you know a more of a stove pipe a stronger tornado at the very end of its life cycle
01:19before it finally roped out but very fortunately uh you know this is a very uh uh very barren area not a
01:26a lot of population here so out in the sand hills there not much for it to hit they twisted up sand
01:31to hit a few trees uh knocked a couple of power poles down when i crossed the road debarked some
01:36trees but other than that i don't i do not believe there was any damage to property or homes i do not
01:41believe there are any injuries as well so uh very uh a perfect tornado in my and my you know from my
01:46opinion it was a beautiful tornado out in the open and it didn't cause any damage so back you had mentioned
01:51that it was a stationary how rare is that for thunderstorms to sit stationary in that tornado
01:58to be nearly stationary for what you said about an hour
02:04yeah you know it is generally these storms are going to move a little bit and in fact what makes
02:09this storm even more rare uh it was actually moving to the west into the southwest so it chased
02:14me down the road to the west uh for about a half a mile before it finally turned south i looked like
02:19it was going to rope out and then it re-intensified again so it was one tornado uh but it had two
02:25different life cycles it was his first life cycle was a little skinny almost like a land spout tornado
02:30uh all tried to rope out and then re-intensify it again before it became that strong stovepipe
02:35moving to the southwest following a boundary that was there at the storms that fired on and it moved
02:40to the southwest so very rare most storms are going to move to the east either southeast due east
02:45northeast sometimes due south but very rarely do you get a southwest moving supercell and tornado
02:50like we had yesterday and on top of it a nearly stationary tornado so uh incredible experience to
02:55be out there yesterday chasing mother nature back to you guys all right aaron one more question about
03:00the tornado then we can talk about maybe your chase plans for the rest of the week but being a storm
03:04chaser you're also a photographer so the lighting has to be just right talk about where you position
03:09yourself to get the kind of video that you got yesterday yeah so this storm so coming into the
03:17storm from the west you know i had sun back behind me so when you're approaching a storm if you want
03:21to get the best shot you know just general photography you want to have the sun behind you
03:26you're looking at the sun uh things in front that are between you and the sun are going to be
03:30not as well lit when the sun is behind you it's like someone's shining a flashlight over your head
03:34lighting up whatever you're shooting and that tornado was just lit up bright white ghostly
03:38white tornado all because of that sun was back behind me and that is my favorite position to
03:42track a tornado is from that western side from back behind it uh number one reason being that if i'm
03:48chasing it and i get into trouble in the storm the tornado looks like it might hit me i can just stop
03:52and let the tornado continue to move to the east this is a rare case yesterday that didn't actually
03:56play out like that where i had to i could stop and just wait it actually started chasing me back but
04:01but yes but the number two reason is because of that lighting back behind me you get beautiful views
04:06rainbows uh the lighting looks looks spectacular like golden hour in the evening hours at sunset
04:13really quickly here about 30 seconds where are you headed towards today
04:20now so i'm looking uh down into kansas so i'll be heading south here from mcook uh probably down
04:25towards garden city kansas you know we've had a couple of these mcs's that mcs come through last
04:29night we got this rain coming from back behind me here to the west of mcook that's going to come down
04:33into kansas but uh if you look into southwest kansas that hasn't really uh it's kind of a
04:38relatively untapped atmosphere right now hasn't been turned over didn't get any storms there we
04:42should have a boundary from the storms left over from last night that went through oklahoma
04:46somewhere there across southern oklahoma southern kansas northern oklahoma and that vicinity but
04:50i'll probably be down by medicine lodge kansas i'm thinking later today back to you guys
04:55all right extreme storm chaser aaron jjack and i think you had a furry friend in your front seat
04:59chasing with the pop uh we wish you luck today in your chase and hopefully we see some more amazing
05:03tornado video that isn't damaging
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