10/18/07 REPORTS: MS / AL / TN / KY / IL / IN / MI / WI

[Blake Michaleski]

Woke up at 7am or so to the NWR blaring a tornado warning just to my west. This storm lost its supercellular characteristics as quickly as it gained them. There was a report of a tornado with this storm near Vancleave, MS. I didn't bother attempting to go after this one as it was becoming very disorganized rather quickly.

Ivory Reinert and myself set out today at around 1030am on relatively minimal expectations. We knew the best show would be up north but we couldn't justify driving to Kentucky from Mobile to chase in the tree's. We have plenty of those down here.

Initial target was Meridian, MS but the action close to the coast (Pensacola Tornado) unfortunately made me second guess how the environment really was. I decided to hang just a little farther south near Hattiesburg. On the way there was when i received news about the Pensacola tornado Thinking here was that there was a very nice instability/theta-e axis just west of Hattiesburg. Storms did initiate in that vicinity and we got on the first storm to go SVR in that region. The storm did not show any sign of rotation so we chose to let it overtake us and attempt to verify the warning for JAN. Nothing at our location close to severe. We then got back out ahead of it. right as it was really becoming outflow dominant and was gusting out.

We piddled around with two other little storms, then a new storm formed to our west and got our attention. A quick little jog to the SW revealed a beautiful, surprisingly high based storm that threw down a nice low roll cloud near the town of Leakesville in SE MS. We found the best vantage point on top of a fairly large hill on which the treeline was cut way back from the road. It was almost like being in the plains for a while there. I could actually see the whole storm.

I'll post some stills here in a bit. I may be dealing with another round tonight though as the actual cold front approaches.

 

[Danny Neal]

Special thanks to Mike Scantlin for the nowcast and useful info throughout the entire chase

Well, well, well. I had class from 12-150. I left the house at 1045, 71/59 and overcast. I wasn't looking for much after seeing the MDT and better parameters featured in W KY and SE IL in that area. I got out of class at 1:45 to towering Cu all over the place. I went home checked SPC Mesoscale Analysis and found that most of the moisture return was happening downstate. Nevertheless, its not often you would a MDT risk in Oct in northern IL. I knew I couldn't hit the south option so I took off at 330 for the Wilmington, IL area just south of Joliet and banked on a rogue supercell migrating NNE from Bloomington area. Well as you may be aware driving in Chicago is not an easy thing to do, so a 45 mile trip took an hour and half and I didnt arrive to my spot til 5. I travelled down IL 43 until US 30 and saw the first of 5 "supercells" to move across south and east side of the Chicago Metro.

First view of storm #1 looking NE from RT 45 and 52 near Wilton Center, IL

Pretty amazing hail core as it dropped nickels and quarters near my house over 30 miles away

Storm still cooking over downtown chicago now

Final view of the storm as it darts off over Lake Michigan

My attention quickly turned to storm #2 now severe warned for Grundy, Will, Du Page, and Cook counties.

Storm is flying toward me, as i reposition a couple miles to the south.

View from 3 SE of Manhattan, it wanted to wind up, exhibited weak rotation and produced copious CG's for the 15 minutes it stayed in sight.

Finally one last look at supercell #2 going into Chicago that produced gusts up to 70 mph in Midlothian

A look at the storm way south in Champaign county at about 530 PM.

 

[David Draun]

I feel so crazy, lol. After all, I do stay in Dekalb nowadays. I debated chasing for several hours before I finally headed out the door. I knew I had a lot of driving to do, and some speed demons to try to intercept, and I had actually canceled my plans. Then I saw rock-hard towers to the southeast repeatedly backbuilding. I figured that I could catch the tail-end cell easily, this is what made me shoot out the door and blast down I-88 to IL-47, to US-30. I ended up in my target of Joliet. Despite no tornadoes, or even any severe weather encountered, I was not disappointed. Sunset-lit towering cloudscapes, rainbows, thick pouches of mammatus, hailshafts, and CG bolts ripping through precipitation cores. I made a successful intercept of a very small rain-free base. The tower extending above was tilted and twisted. Just simply gorgeous storm structure from some low-topped supercells in Chicago's SW suburbs.

They're so far away! Can I catch them? I-88 in Dekalb.

Overshooting tops! Getting closer, approaching IL-47

US-30 now: Just rock-hard convection!

Almost on these speed demons now! SVR one county over. I'm near Plainfield, IL at this point.

Shallow convection, I can see the bases! A little backshear action.

There's the tail end cell! there are huge, round mammatus to the right, out of the frame.

Just about the most twisted and tilted updraft of that size I have ever seen.

New tail-end cell. Looking super! Near Joliet now.

End of the chase. I shot stills until I ran out of daylight completely.

The rest of the pics can be found here.
http://s10.photobucket.com/albums/a101/sgtdave2316/Chase 10 18 07/

I consider it a success, given the circumstances.

Congrats to all that bagged a tube today.

 

[John Farley]

Briefly - I chased a gorgeous supercell today from Greenville to Neoga, IL, where darkness forced me to give up the chase. This storm had multiple tornado warnings and a very persistent wall cloud throughout the time I observed it. I was able to keep up surprisingly well with its 50 mph movement because it moved more or less parallel to I-70, though I did lose it for a little while in the Effingham area before re-intercepting near Neoga.

I cannot confirm either of the reported tornadoes. I suppose there could have been, especially northwest of Brownstown, but nothing I could confirm from where I was. Awesome storm, nonetheless. Also multiple reports of wind damage and hail to golfball size.

I will do a detailed report when time permits, and may have more to say once I review video. In the meantime, here are a few pics of this beautiful storm:

Wall cloud and rainfoot, as the storm produced golfball hail and wind damage in Greenville. This is looking west or WNW from the southeast edge of Greenville:

Looking west toward Mulberry Grove from Vandalia, around the time of the tornado report. Nothing here I could confirm as a tornado:

Looking northwest from one mile east of Brownstown around or just after the time of the tornado report. I really thought it was going to do it then, and it may have, but not that I could confirm from my location:

More later.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Chased with the Peoria crew in central Illinois today though we were separated before we intercepted the first supercell. A semi passing in the opposite lane blew my scanner antenna off my trunk so I had to pull off and fix that and lost my caravan, but it didn't end up hurting me much. I had some data issues but was close enough I could go visual.

Got the first view of the supercell south of Atwood, IL and decided to stop a mile west of Arthur to watch the quickly forming wall cloud (below).

The wall cloud eventually fell apart and the storm looked kind of grungy again. However, soon it started to reorganize. With the insane storm motions I decided to reposition further north and east before it got it's act back together. Much to my dismay, while heading east I look over my shoulder and see a nice tube dropping down above an area of rapidly rising scud. I tried shouting over the radio to alert my long lost caravan, but was borrowing a little HT and was well out of their range. The funnel lasted about 30 seconds and went back up. I soon whizzed passed my north road, so I had to continue further east. Untimely again, another funnel begins to drop. I grabbed the camera and just pointed it backwards and was able to capture about 4 seconds of video in between shots of the roof, side windows and the road.

Shot of the funnel cloud behind me.

I finally found a north option west of Tuscola and was able to get a view of the very nicely structured supercell.

Continued north a bit, before the storm started shrinking up.

I pulled off just south of Pesotum to watch the storm pass me up after deciding there wasn't much of a tornado threat left.

What was left of the updraft spinning itself into nothing...

I saw another supercell that had gone tornado warned to my south and decided to try and cut ahead of it's path. Lost data for a moment, when quickly the rains picked up and inflow really kicked in towards the storm. At almost the same moment the power in the little town I was passing through went out leaving it completely dark.

At that point I decided that I wasn't in the mood to intercept a tornado warned supercell at night with no data moving at 1,000,235 mph.

Turned back around near Allerton and headed back for home, pretty satisfied. Been a LONG time since I was able to sleep passed sunrise, eat lunch at home before leaving, and be home in time to relax and eat dinner.

 

[Glenn Schubert]

I stuck around in southern Illinois and waited for the storms to started developing. Around 5pm, 2 separate storms cells near Farmington, MO became TOR Warned. I waited across the Missiissippi River in Jackson County, Illinois for the storms to cross. This was close to the area that the F4 crossed from Missouri to Illinois Sept 22, 2006. Unfortunately, today the main storm cell seemed to weaken as it crossed into Illinois. None the less, I stayed with this storm since I wouldn't have enough daylight to catch up to another one. This storm seemed to cycle as it moved very swiftly into Perry County, Illinois. It became TOR Warned again as it moved through Perry Co and into Jefferson Co, IL. I couldn't keep up with it since it was moving at about 50mph, but a tornado was apparently spotted from this storm in Jefferson Co, IL near Belle Rive. Attached pictures are the TOR Warned storm in Perry Co, IL.

 

[Doyle McIntosh]

Started out the day with having to make the decision whether or not I was going to go to Iowa with friends to visit a friend, or chase. Luckily I chose to chase. I was initially going to hang around muncie to see if my team would deploy (bsu storm chase team). Ended up not being the case though because of the fast approaching night fall, so I decided to go out on my own, I left Muncie around 5 and as I was driving south on I-69 saw a cell blowing up in western indiana, probably south of Lafayette. I got excited and took I-65 north out of indy trying to catch up but never did.

looking north from I-65 out of indy

north out of indy

giving up on it as the sun sets and it draggs NE

view to the west looking at the supercells in western IL about 80 miles away

the moon illuminating a rain free base

rotating wall cloud under the meso, very exciting with the lightning flashing

ucar nexrad image i found in the archives of about the exact time.

about 10 min later the storm was a good 30 miles away




I ended up at my parents house in Attica Indiana just after sunset and waited for the line of supercells in eastern Illinois to move in. As a particular supercell approached Terrance Cook and I situated ourselves about five miles south of I-74 in fountain county indiana. A structurally awesome supercell literally screamed in from the south west, and had a very pronounced rain free base, meso as well as rotating wall cloud underneath. I have to say it was very frightening waiting for the lightning separated by a second or two to light up the storm. There was no way we could chase the storm after intercept because reportedly by the nws the cell was moving east northeast and 70 kts (but it seemed like 2,764,376 kts). as it passed terrance and I snapped some lightning shots and called it a night.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

Just as a note... Can you (as in those who are posting in this thread, either previously or in the future) try to keep the number of pictures in your REPORTS to 5 or fewer. I know this can be tough if you have a lot of interesting pictures that you want to show, but a single page of this thread may be very, very long if each user includes 5-10-15 pics. You are certainly welcome to link to pictures, though (i.e. use the URL tags instead of the IMG tags)! Thanks!

 

[Brandon Sullivan]

Overall not a bad chase at all.. I set up shop in Tuscola, IL, About 30 miles S of Champaign. When warnings started pouring out, I headed west out of town to take a peek at some supercells, which went tor warned.. Plenty of rotation within the storms. At some points, the virga was even taking on a helical formation!!

 

[Skip Talbot]

I got out of work just before 5:00 pm in University Park (about 20 miles north of Kankakee), to see a nice little LP-ish looking storm going overhead. The contrast was amazing, although the base looked a little high and dry for tornadoes.

This was the first cell that went severe warned over Chicago, thirty miles shy of the city before its warned:

Second or third storm in the line, severe warned, with an interesting little dip in the base:

I let this one slide on to my north, chasing into Chicago is futile

Looking south at other storms:

The sunset was divine:

Nothing really exciting about those storms, but they were simply beautiful. I wish my chase ended on that high note, but I had to give it everything I had, and hauled ass down 57 towards the Tor-Warned stuff. It was dark before I even got to Champaign Urbana. I rounded the corner at 74 and blasted into Indiana after a nice looking supercell. The weather radio egged me on with its 35 mph speeds in the warning text. Those storms were moving closer to 60 and were damn hard to catch. While others were bailing, I stubbornly had to intercept. I got with a few miles of the base near Lafayette as the storm regained a tornado warning and saw some ragged lowerings. After a hectic 3 hours of playing catchup, I let the storm go.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Spent the day in and around Owensboro, Kentucky watching multiple supercells hit the city directly. Observed numerous power flashes after dark. Great lightning shows after sunset. All that said, despite the crazy velocity signatures (constant 92-115mph shear markers on WxWorx), continuous tornado warnings and sirens going off everywhere, the storms did not live up to the hype in person. Very similar to 6/7/07 where outflow dominance was the order of the day. Some impressive structure but no real chance at tornadoes that I saw. I was under the shear markers on WxWorx all day and saw nothing but strong outflow.

A few photos:

Structure

Small gustnado with stuff flying

Typical sight today

After dark

A few more:
http://stormhighway.com/2007/oct18hd2.jpg
http://stormhighway.com/2007/oct1807c.jpg
http://stormhighway.com/2007/oct1807f.jpg
http://stormhighway.com/2007/oct1807b.jpg

 

[Dave Gallaher]

Today was a double shift workday for me, starting with a concert in the afternoon for the patients at Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa (Alabama's state mental hospital). Our performance was ended early with the tornado warning that first came into west Tuscaloosa County, so we ate the dinner provided for us and watched radar on tv. Rush hour was approaching, so a chase was out.

We moved downtown to be near the nightclub that was our venue for the evening, and a nice lawyer conducted me to the seventh floor of a bank building with a great view to the southwest. By now, the main supercell that had crossed the state line near Aliceville had been tor warned for a while, and velocity scans on Baron tv-ware showed on and off organization. When the storm slowed from 25mph to 15mph, it was more than I could resist, so I drove southwest from Tuscaloosa on I-59 and turned north on 11/43 and followed some rural roads until I encountered the rainfree base.

By this time, the storm had begun to collapse rapidly, it would seem (I was not backed by radar or radio attm) and I got the last gasp, a brief rotating wall cloud. Vid captures are posted here.

For a gig day, it was a nice impromptu chase, and the Tuscaloosa area once again proves to be worth investigating.

 

[Terry Tyler]

today could have been real good, but i guess we were liking that lift...

it got really hairy down south and in AL but i wasnt even tryin to mess with those storms, cause they were movin way to fast...

i stayed at the house waiting for a storm to form somewhere in the watch...but it began to look like there we were seriously missing out on that good lifting...

you could really see why "timing" is so much of an issue with the storms...

i rolled up to booneville, and i did some shooting of the clouds...but nothing formed until night time...thats when it got a little scary...

i remember about sundown i saw a little line start building up in W, TN and i was hoping that it would build in...by the time i got back, there was a pretty hairy MCS out there, and it had SVR warning all along the line, including a pair of TOR warnings near ripley...

the local reporters were talking about some crazy amount (1700+) CG strokes and hour, so i said...damn, im gonna go and try to get some lightning shots...

well, i decided to ride 78 W into pontotoc county and meet the storm...but there were low clouds all over the area...when i got there, i could see the line, and just a whole lot of lightning...not CG lightning, just blue flashing...i couldent make anything out, out there...but i could see a scary looking shelf cloud when it came over...it seemed to push all the low clouds along the leading edge of it, and the clouds were white, and with the flashes of lightning, you could see some pretty scary arcus formations along the leading edge...

at this time, the radio was saying severe storm warning quoting 60+mph winds...well, i let the line over run me to see what kind of winds it had...and i wasnt impressed...

the winds couldent have been over 40MPH, but i was feeling outflow blowing away from the storm about 10 miles before i got there, so i guess that explains it...

i rode with the line all the way home letting it run up on me sometimes to see if it was getting any stronger...but it wasnt...way north like benton, and tippah county near the TN, MS border was where the real action was at...real nice bow-echo on radar...

anyway, thats how it went down yesterday...a whole lot of dead-action...

 

[Kurt Hulst]

I just wanted to post a few pics of yesterdays event As David Diehl and My self chased in Indiana. We intercepted two supercells that came out of Lafayette, IN. We Observed some nice rotating wall clouds and some nice striations on both supercells. Just before it became dark we observed a large funnel almost all the way to the ground. I have some video that I will look at later and maybe post if it is worth it. We had to play catch up to this storm and as we approached the south side of Warsaw, IN. We observed a large cone funnel under lit by the city lights.

Soon after we had to break off from the supercell which later developed ahead of the line and caused tornadoes near Lansing. On my way home I intercepted a tornado warned supercell in St. Joseph county. As I was driving north I could see some nicely stacked plates and a wall cloud. As I approached School Craft I witnessed a beautiful shelf cloud.

I did not witness any tornadoes with this squall line just a large amount of rain and some non severe winds.

Will post a link to more pictures when I get the chance and maybe video as well.

 

[Adam Lucio]

Chased with Matthew Fischer along with Chad Cowan.

Set off around 10am with a target of Champaign/Urbana.

Stopped in Gilman, IL and decided to play our waiting game there, sustained winds easily 25mph gusting to 40. Watched tower after tower go up and get sheared off before deciding to head further east into Indiana down US-24.

Caught up with the first convective cluster in central Indiana about 10 miles north of Lafayette just off I-65. First severe warned storm of the day [for us] passed directly overhead with a peak gust measured at only 47.5mph. We decided to stick with the southern-most storm and followed it further east. Tornado warnings started going up in Illinois. We made the mistake of calling off our chase on the southern cell to ponder our next move and maybe head back into IL. About 10 minutes later the cell we were on gets tor warned so we quickly try to play catch up to no avail. Witnessed a few funnels but could not confirm any touchdowns due to poor visibility and road network.

We figured this would be the best chance for a long-track tornado so we stuck with it for a couple hours trying to catch it. Shortly after passing the NWS office of northern Indiana the cell weakened so we decided to ditch it and head for home. There was very little lightning with this storm which made it harder for us to determine what the lowerings we observed actually were. We did notice the same lowering/funnel that Kurt posted.

We decided to stop at Arbys for some food just West of Nappanee, IN. There was a fairly intense squall line heading that way so we figured we would just let it pass. Before heading back home I noticed a particular area of this line that seemed to be turning right and becoming separated so I made the call to head back east to see what it does.

Turns out this was the cell that Produced the high end EF-3 tornado in Nappanee. We experienced nothing more than horizontal rain which would stop suddenly and very intense wind [perhaps we were in the RFD region?]. Arrived at the intense damage just as emergency crews were. We were probably 2 minutes behind this tornado. We decided to stick with it, Chad and I believe we may have seen the edge of the tornado but again we cant confirm this. There were corn fields completely turned over, Very large trees snapped in half, power poles downed and a mobile home park that look completely flattened. At this point Matt submitted the report on spotter network.

After we noticed the storm weakening on radar we decided to head back to Nappanee to help out and document the storm, only my left rear tire somehow popped off and we ourselves were now stranded and stuck waiting for help about 1 1/2-2 miles outside of town. The feeling was sickening, all we could see was flashing lights and sit there helpless ourselves as emergency crews and ambulances one after another flew past us.

CNN from Atlanta noticed my position on spotter network and called asking for a damage report and if we had any video, which unfortunately we didn't.

The radar signatures from this storm were very impressive!

We were actually punching the core on this storm to get ahead of it until we noticed the strong velocity signatures and slowed down/stopped, definitely a good call as we might have gotten caught up in the tornado had we kept going.

All in all a very exciting chase to probably end the year. It was a pleasure to meet and chase with Chad and hopefully the tire experience wont deter him from future outings [By the way Chad, repairs were only 170 bucks!]

Heres a couple structure shots.