*FIRST 10 MINUTES OF DAMAGING KANSAS TORNADO* - May 24, 2021 Selden, KS Tornado Terrorizes Town

A remnant outflow boundary was draped west-to-east roughly near or along I-70 in northwestern Kansas on the afternoon of May 24, 2021. This boundary ultimately emanated from a large scale convective system from the prior day across the Central/Northern High Plains. A dryline sharpened throughout the late morning and bisected the aforementioned boundary near the Goodland, KS area. Multiple weak and short-lived tornadoes were reported with shallow supercells/supershowers near the intersection of these two boundaries prior to 3PM. After spending the previous night at an Inn near Hot Springs, SD, teams Bobcat and Badger reached the interstate south of Goodland 15 minutes after the last tornado weakened in the mid-afternoon.

Split decision time: do we hang north or drop south to the Garden City, KS target? Both teams decided to hang north along the remnant boundary due to its rich capacity of vertical surface vorticity, history of tornadic cells, and an impressive instability gradient/baroclinicity. A new cell develops near Colby, KS within minutes and becomes the new target. Over the next couple of hours this cell would produce and cycle through multiple wall clouds and funnel clouds of different shapes and sizes as it slowly snaked its way northeast, paralleling U.S. Hwy 83.

After a close call with a muddy field access road, team Bobcat and Badger become separated through the chaos of dense chaser traffic and a rapidly evolving supercell storm entering its 5th (or 6th?) cycle near Rexford. While team Bobcat pushed well east ahead of the storm in order to establish safe positioning, team Badger remained close to the new area of interest a couple miles west of Selden, KS. Rapid tornadogenesis would then unfold as we drove through the small town--a picturesque truncated cone danced in the distance across generally open landscape, morphing into a 1/2 mile wide multiple vortex monster over the following ten minutes.

This is the strongest tornado I've seen from such close distance as intermittent sub-vorticies destroyed structures in mere seconds. Truly a terrifying experience seeing something so powerful potentially impact people's livelihoods. I've been chasing regularly for 8 years and this is my first experience witnessing a town tangoing with a violent tornado.

Miraculously, no one was killed or injured by the tornado and its sub-vortices, though large chunks of detritus and scrap swirled around the violent vortices without resistance...had a sub-vortex hit a more substantial structure, there's no doubt in my mind this tornado would've been rated EF-2+.

This was the first of 3 tornadoes we documented on this day, the second being an anticyclonic tornado roughly 10 minutes after the video cuts, and another cyclonic tornado further east of the State Hwy 123/23 intersection--that footage will be compiled and released at a later time.

The Selden, KS tornado was rated EF-1 and persisted for 30 minutes, a rather rare and remarkable feat. Typically tornadoes of that duration develop with greater damage, injury, and loss of life before dissipating to dark eternity.

Thanks for taking time out of your day to watch this raw documentation. I hope I never have to experience a town experience the wrath of something so wild and ruthless again, but there is the law of averages argument.

God bless.

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