04/30/10 REPORTS: AR, MO

[Bart_Comstock]

We started our day off early here in eastern Ark. We had a few hailers move through that gave off a decent wind and rain show as they passed over I-540 just south of Fayetteville, AR.

Other than that I didn't really get to get out much today due to work but I was able to get into Scotland, AR behind the supercells that produced the long track tornadoes that slammed that area. I helped with road closers, directing traffic, and clearing trees off the highway before grabbing a few damage shots and vacating the town. Bellow is a very brief glimpse of what I saw in Scotland.

 

[John Farley]

What looked like a decent setup between STL and COU fizzled out, so I just saw linear storms in my chase along I-70. The real excitement came at home after dark, when the big HP supercell came through the STL area. I've posted a short report, with a few structure shots from my chase and a couple velocity images of the supercell as it approached and came through:

http://www.johnefarley.com/chase43010.htm

I did notice more chasers than you usually see in east-central Missouri.

 

[Jason Blum]

David Toner and I found ourselves closing on the cell near Gainesville, MO... but due to very poor road options and the poor terrain, we had to make the painful decision to break away from it and double-back toward Willow Springs, in hopes of intercepting it further north. It was a big gamble, because we were only 10 minutes from the tornado and we knew it would take 30 to 45 minutes before we could get back to it if we broke away, but if we'd continued on our current track we risked missing it and then finding ourselves without any road access with which to pursue it northeast. (We tried several times to access it off of various lesser roads, but all of the ones we tried just took us deeper into the jungle.)

In the end our gamble paid off, but due to the poor terrain, poor lighting, and the HP nature of the storm, our footage isn't great. The still images are frame-grabs from the video, so I apologize for the poor image quality.

Here is the short video:

 

[Dave Marshall]

We moved from Biloxi, MS up into the Jackson, MS area at first, with my initial target being the Monroe, LA area. By 1200 Local it because pretty apparent that the dynamics in northern LA weren't going to be quite as good as I had hoped, but southeast Arkansas looked better. We got up to Sheridan as the line really started to move into the instability, so we ran further west to Malvern. Of course, as soon as we got there, a cell fired south of Sheridan that started to look promising.

We started to run back east, but made some bad road choices and ended up catching up to it just south of Little Rock, almost an hour later, and after dark.

We got on the updraft base just as it crossed I-440 south of Little Rock, and stayed on it for about an hour. It produced several times, the first two we couldn't see, all of which were heavily rain wrapped, but the absolutely insane electrical activity and occassional transformer flash gave us a pretty good idea what it was doing. The storm finally was cut off about 60 miles west of Memphis by convection in front of it, and given the time and extremely heavy precip, we opted to try to outrun the line to a hotel in Memphis. There were hundreds of trees down throughout the area, a few poles broken off here and there, but after we left Little Rock on it's tail, we didn't stumble on much in the way of property damage thankfully.

It was a spectacular storm, I just wish it had been more photogenic. Thanks to the guys on spotterchat that kept me out of trouble with a rookie navigator in the passenger seat

 

[Aaron Gerhardt]

I know it's just a side-note to everything that went on in the south but worthy enough to be added into this report. Meteorologist Aaron Shaffer and I encountered a strong bowing segment in Kirkwood/Monmouth, Illinois.

Radar image as it was over us...marked us in light blue

Kirkwood@4pm

We were getting some pretty decent winds when the outflow hit us...the next radar return before it hit Monmouth it seemed to have intensified a bit.

Pottery Barn on the north side of Monmouth, roof completely blown off

Unfortunate car got whacked by a gas pump...

The lone pole that went over

Pretty much it there, we were in contact earlier with DVN to get their estimation on the wind speeds...had to of been upwards of 80mph to get that roof off. This line of storms also ripped a hangar to bits at the Quad Cities airport...

 

[Joey Ketcham]

Tyler Costantini, Jordan Hamilton, Jill Gilardi and I chased the tornadic cell near Gainsville, MO. Not really a whole lot to report, the storm was one big HP mess and we only got a quick glimpse of it as it passed to our west/northwest.

 

[Adam Lucio]

A pretty craptastic day on the northern target. Ended up up in Monmouth near the damaged pottery barn as well.

Full account: http://www.aerostorms.com/043019-monmouth-illinois-pottery-barn-damage.php

 

[Dick McGowan]

Saw the Scotland wedge from a couple of miles away on a hill (that roped out just north of Clinton, AR). We also witnessed an after-dark fat cone that was on the ground for at least 15 minutes and roped out a couple of miles away from Bee Branch, AR, as well. My condolences to the victims...pics and video at some point.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

Ended up with the Monmouth damage as well http://www.benholcomb.com/Chase-Accounts/20100430

What a crappy day!