SWIFT 2014 Day 2 - Tornado near Orrick, MO

Today was a great day for SWIFT team. We first arrived in Kansas City, Missouri at around 2:30 p.m. We sat and watched major cloud structures form in Independence and began to move Northeast. We saw two formations, one in the north and one in the south. As a team, we made a great decision to go after the northern forming clouds We then made our way to Riverbend, where we reported a non-rotating wall cloud at 4:54. We then moved to Missouri City where we reported hail that we measured around 1.5 inches. At 5:21 we noticed the wall cloud beginning to rotate that soon turned into a tornado that we reported. It was a pretty bittersweet moment to see a tornado so early in our trip. We then continued to chase the tornado 5 miles West into the town of Orick. The storm then grew very large and stopped rotating, only to continue moving west as a severe thunderstorm. .

 --Merrill Dean, for the SWIFT 2014 team