Jon Finch and I witnessed several Tornados between Greensburg and Windthorst on 7 May 2002.  At 6:49 pm a small condensation dimple cone formed and appeared to be in the same mesocyclonic circulation of the developing large cone tornado to the south of the road which was 1/2 way down. This dimple cone became a tornado with a narrow dust funnel to the ground at 6:50 pm and was moving toward the back of the large mother cone to the southwest.  By 6:53 pm the small "satellite" tornado had moved around the now large cone tornado to its southwest side and eventually came out the front to the east of the cone and vanished or was ingested.  So by 6:53 pm the large mother cone was a tornado, first saw dirt whirl, and the other smaller tornado, were on the ground simultaneously to form twin tornados.  We went back to look at the radar and determined the twin tornados were 3-4 miles due west of us.  They crossed the road moving northeast for a few minutes, then the larger one got larger and abruptly started moving southeast.  We originally thought we were ok until it moved southeast and would block our only south option if we did not get to it in time, so we moved several times trying to stay ahead of it.  This tornado started in an open oil field in extreme northwest Kiowa Co just east of the Arkansas River.  There was another narrow tornado back to the north at 710 to 711 pm that was crossing the north to south county road as we were driving south to get to 54/100 highway.  John and I got RFD'd shortly after.  This according to Jeff's survey was a separate tornado.  He said the large cone tornado damage area stopped in the field back to the west.  I did not see the cone dissipate, because it had completely been rain wrapped and we lost the visual.  At 725 pm about 2 miles east of Greensburg looking north from Hwy 400 at a distance of 3 to 4 miles we saw another tornado.  If everything we have is accurate we saw 7 separate tornados between 552 pm and 725 pm and between 4 se of Windthorst and 4 miles nne of Greensburg.  Jon and I never did blast toward Salina like I had initially wanted and decided to go down toward Woodward at the last second.  We thought we could not go wrong with 3000 to 4000 j/kg and near the dry line at Gage.  After we got into Oklahoma we saw the towers breaking the cap back to the north and shot east to Gate and then to Buffalo and back north into Kansas. From Hyw 183 we ran into road construction and delayed us for 10 minutes just north of Coldwater.  We then saw the lowered bases to the west toward Windthorst and took a west turn and a south turn on some county roads.  Here is where we encountered Jon Davies, (his pictures) and the Matt Crowther and Betsy Adams entourage just prior to our first tornados at 552 pm.  We stopped and chatted briefly after the 6 pm tornados.  From there we dropped south a few more miles and observed the big cone at 650 pm.  By the way, I had set my video cam time to my GPS, so these times are very accurate.

   Another wedge tornado had formed earlier about 4 miles southwest of Windthorst and was rain wrapped by our observation to the west.  This first tornado was around 552 pm.  Jon Finch and I did a quick survey, a few days later, and went down Jewel Road east of Dodge to Marshall and 135 Road just west of the triple county point of Edwards, Kiowa, and Ford, and just west of the Arkansas River in the east central Ford county where a large hook showed on radar.  Lots of tree damage and irrigation systems were rolled over.  We estimated the width of this first wedge tornado to be from 1/2 to 3/4 mile wide.  Some farmers told of 6 large cows from 1200 to 1400 pounds were lifted about 3/4 of a mile to another field to the northeast and killed.  He said the weird thing was their eyes were missing and sockets filled with mud.  Apparently one was decapitated.  Another guy said he had video and showed it to us.  On his video there was a rope around 552 pm and a vertical narrow funnel at 553 pm followed by a very large wedge block tornado around 6 pm.  Jon and I had seen this at these times but were unsure of the wedge.  However looking back at the video I am now very certain the hard to see large tornado was probably the rain wrapped wedge.  This tornado seemed to stay almost stationary for several minutes and then dissipated to the rope stage.  Jeff Hutton, our Warning Coordinating Meteorologist (WCM), spent most of the day on May 8th doing a damage survey and said he has some F3 damage on both tornados, and may rate higher. 

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