May 8th Tornado Chase

On my way home on May 8th, I had just pulled onto a side street in Xenia, OH when the emergency alert went off on my radio. A tornado warning had been made, and was spotted at US 68 and I-71. Twice weird! I live just a few miles from that location, and the tornado was heading towards it “due north”. AND Xenia was the location of the now infamous F5 tornado that nearly wiped the town away in 1974. I frantically called to check on my family and they were all fine.

We live on Port William Road and the tornado had gone over Port William next, and had done damage there. After checking on my family on the cell, I went to Kroger to get some prescriptions and talked to my brother about the location of the storm. My brother Levi is also a weather nut like me!!

He said the storm was about even with me, just east of Xenia. I jumped onto the US 35 by-pass and caught up to the storm in just a few minutes. The photo above was taken on US 35 heading east just south of Jamestown. I got off US 35 and tried to follow the storm more, but it was dissipating. I still got a cool series of shots that I made into a panoramic of the storm that had gone from my house in Wilmington, to where I was then, near Cederville, OH.

I sent in the top image to WHIO-TV News Center 7, and their chief meteorologist, Jamie Simpson, used in on the 11:00 news and the next morming. It also made it onto their website! Pretty exciting stuff!