10/09/09 REPORTS: MS/AL/AR/TN

[Terry Tyler]

I chased storms in Mississippi today. Initially i headed to the cells in NW Mississippi because there was better low-level shear. I waited in Potts Camp, MS for a half hour or so, and decided to go south. I wound up getting into the tornado warned storm coming out of Houston, MS. On the way to intercept the storm, i had a blow out on an unpaved road. This wound up ending the chase on the spot about 3 miles from the storm. I couldent believe the luck. Still wound up getting a few pictures. Didnt bother getting the video camera out, there wasnt too much to look at. Plus it was moving very fast.

Looking West:

Looking South:

Emergency managers reported a tornado with the storm just up the road from me. I did not see one, then again since i was just SE of the storm i wasnt able to see the lowering itself due to rain wrapping around it.

A detailed account is on my site if anyone wants to read it.

- Terry

 

[Bart_Comstock]

The morning of the 9th when I got off work from my hotel at 7am it was still coming down pretty well across northwest Arkansas and much of the flooding that had began the previous day persisted well into the day on the 9th. Bellow is some video of the flooding I shot in Washington County, AR.

 

[Brett Adair]

We started out moving up Cooridor-X toward Hamilton, AL by early afternoon and caught up with the lead cellular storms as they were developing. The storms were moving at 45-50 mph and were rather hard to keep up with in the woodlands of northwest Alabama and northeast Mississippi. We caught a nice rotating meso that traversed just south of Hamilton. The storm had a reported tornado with damage near Amory, MS several minutes earlier. As the storm approached, we witnessed the meso being undercut and the meso broaden. There were a couple of funnels that I shot along Cooridor-X into central Marion County, but my camera screwed up in the middle of the chase and now I have to purchase a new one. A few shots from the chase can be found here...

http://alabamastormtrackers.com/2009/10/09/storm-shots-from-nw-alabama/

First time I have seen pileus clouds in Alabama this year. Those towers were hitting the cap pretty hard on the nose of the instability axis at that time.

 

[Wes Carter]

Mods, if you could add TN to the thread title I would appreciate it.

I started out by heading towards the MS/AL state line on highway 72. A little bit after noon cells started popping up ahead of the line and became severe warned. I tried to stay ahead of the most promising looking cells but they soon fizzled and were replaced by other cells. I intercepted 3 tornado warned cells with healthy shear markers but it looked to me like they were too close together and getting undercut by each others outflow.

I drove on up to Lawrenceburg, TN trying to catch up with a promising cell but it soon was absorbed into the line. I followed one cell that looked very promising that eventually passed over my house but according to friends back there it was just a fast moving cloud with some rain.

I followed one cell all the way from Fayetteville, TN to Winchester that was tornado warned. It didn't have a noticeable wall cloud but rather just some raggedy scud rising into the rain free base.

A few observations:
I never heard thunder nor saw lightning.
The cells were extremely small and low topped.
The updraft area in the lower forward (East South East)area relative to the storm motion.
Storm motions were 40-50mph.
The little rotation I saw was more horizontal.

Orphan anvil with severe warned cell behind it.

The rain free base of the cell that went from Lawrenceburg, TN to McMinnville, TN.