Id have to agree with Jeff about this event being good for someone still learning. Initially, i had planned to go south and wait for storms to build in. Having watched how the previous night unfolded, i thought that we might get something good there and i could follow it into AL so i drove down to Starkville, MS and waited for a while. There was over 2500SBCAPE and sig tornadoes over 8, plus the terrain was good. After waiting for almost 45 minutes, it soon became obvious to me that i had made a major mistake and storms were not forming that far south for some reason or another. I immediatly headed back up to Tupelo. There i tracked a lone cell coming out of southwestern Pontotoc and met it just outside of tupelo.
This is a photo of the storm early in its life about 20 mins before it achieved its tornado warning. Note that little RFD cut in there.
The storm improved rapidly and became tornado warned. I made major mistake and tried to race it east on 78 but looking back, it was another critical mistake because of how fast it was moving. I had a pretty good view of it the whole time i was on 78 and the storm possessed a large, broad wallcloud. It was really elevated, or high off the ground so i didnt think it had much chance of making one at the time.
I made another major mistake and took hwy23 outside of fulton, ms north towards redbay, AL to intercept it. I was flying down that road trying to meet it, and i came extremely close when i made it to red bay. You could see some amazing shapes to the storm, but it was quickly cut short when the hook obscured all visibility of the storm, and i was caught directly behind it. Reminded me alot of the 2-18-09 demopolis storm in that aspect.
I hit about 3 stop lights on highway 23 heading E out of redbay and was trapped behind a mass of cars. I passed them and kept going, but i wasnt making any progress. It began hooking out pretty bad near russellville, and i could see my little GPS icon go right inside of the hook, but when the radar updated, it was just as far ahead of me as it was to begin with. I followed the storm all the way to russellville, AL and then i gave up following it and called it a day. It left an extensive swath of hail with some hail-fog that was pretty cool. Most of it was nickel to half-dollar size that i saw. It nailed a bunch of construction workers...Good thing they had their hard hats on.
What aggravated me the most is i didnt get a whole lot of photos of the initial storm structure because i was so flustered. The storms moved so fast, and i didnt want to stop on the highway and possibly sacrifice distance to get pictures. Looking back, i never should have followed it into NW AL and kept the view i had from the tenn tom waterway. Thats got to be some of the worst chasing country available.
