Duke Evans' 1991 video of the Andover tornado

I grew up in tornado alley terrified of storms to the point I passed out as a kid in the basement as they passed over. I read about this tornado and a story about a boy who was killed and it changed my view on them. I decided to study and confront my fears and thought what can be done to prevent deaths in these storms. Meteorology became my passion and still is.

This guy was WAY ahead of his time filming this tornado. Still, lots of people move the camera at everything but the tornado, scream, cuss, film the ground. This guy was perfectly tracking it, great zoom shoots. Remarkable.

This footage is 30 years old and still amazing. If you’ve never seen a tornado up close they are so beautiful and mesmerizing for such destructive forces.

The year is 2021. Almost 2022. This is still some of the best footage ever captured, both for audio (no screaming and minimal drunken punditry) and video (amazing video of a mature tornado and a good chunk of its life cycle). I hereby nominate Duke Evans for best picture, 1991 to 2021.

It's wild to see how far away some of the vortices were from the main funnel.

This video is rare. As in, it's one of the few large and up close tornado videos where the cameraman isn't being overly dramatic.

That's the most violent close-up rotation ever caught on film. This video will forever be the measuring stick to all tornado videos.

I love how in the past cameras could zoom in 20× or more and still have the same quality

Doesn't matter that this was 25 years ago. This still stands as some of the best tornado footage ever. I remember the Andover monster and this footage is one of the reasons why. The other is the footage from the barracks as it went through McConnell AFB.

That was the longest six and a half minutes I've seen in a long time. Can't comprehend going through that.

The footage of the tornado behind those houses as it chugs along is so iconic.

More than 30 years later, another tornado has struck Andover.

The 1991 Andover tornado was at its highest intensity an F5 tornado. It was 600 feet wide, with the tornado being on the ground for 46 miles and wreaking havoc over Kansas for just over 60 minutes. Sadly 17 people were killed. The tornado crossed over the McConnell Air Force Base and just missed a row of B-1 USAF bombers costing about $400 million for each jet. There were about 25 B-1 bombers at the McConnell AFB at that time. The tornado passed over the west side of the airbase and just missed the hangars and line of B-1 bombers. The rest of the airbase was hit hard to the tune of about $60 million dollars.

Who else is looking down at those vehicles and thinking to themselves where the hell has time gone??

Biggest nightmare of my life. Have frequent dreams of a tornado dropping out of nowhere, and heading for the house, desperately trying to get people in the basement.

Great camera work. Calm. No overselling talk like YouTube storm chasers.

this video, which is incredible by the way, made me realize how much unnecessary noise todays storm chasers make with their mouth.

This is the tornado that made me fascinated with tornadoes. They showed this clip on the news when I was a kid living in San Francisco. #nostalgia

So powerful and so much better without all the hysterical screaming of most modern chasers. Great zoom work and perspective. Of all the modern chasers Pecos Hank does a great job of informative, calm commentary even when he is in danger.

IDK how anyone could give this a thumbs down. Best tornado footage ever in my opinion.