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It looks like winter around the town of Harper. Christmas lights hang from the houses and Santas decorate many front porches. But Sunday night, the skies looked more like spring.
Chance Hayes, from the National Weather Service office in Wichita, says an EF-0 tornado touched down northeast of town. Hayes and his team surveyed the damage and they estimate the tornado measured about 100 yards wide. The length of a football field.
The tornado only took down some weak branches from a line of trees and turned over a few bales of hay, but Hayes says it could have been worse if it went through Harper. “You could take the biggest, strongest tornado, move it right through a very non-populated area, no trees, and it would be rated as an EF-0,” said Hayes. “If you put it in the middle of town, it could go all the way up to an EF-5.”
On the final night of rifle hunting season, Matt Brannon was in his deer blind near the storm. Brannon says the wind and lightening picked up, but he thought it was just a thunderstorm. Later, when Brannon got back to his truck, his friend told him what happened. “He said are you crazy? Did you know there was a tornado out there? And I said I had no idea,” said Brannon. “I said I saw a little rotation in the clouds but I didn’t see a tornado.”
The tornado scoured the ground. Proof of Mother Nature’s intensity. A force that didn’t seem to bother those living in Harper, but scattered the deer Brannon was waiting for. “I thought I was really tough hunting in a tornado,” he joked.
It’s been 10 years since Kansas has seen a December tornado. The last one in the counties covered by the National Weather Service in Wichita was 1956.
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