10/2/07 Reports: MO/IL

[Jesse Risley]

My chase partner and I left the Macomb area around 3:30 p.m. We intercepted the TOR warned cell in NE Missouri, about 12 miles west of Hannibal, around 5:00 p.m. We followed the cell for several hours, ending the chase near Rushville, IL shortly before 7:30 p.m. Several brief touchdowns were observed. The storm near Hannibal, MO showed persistent rotation for over 20 miles, with numerous brief funnels. This cell produced some damage near Shelbina and Monroe City, MO as it moved nearly due east along U.S. 36.

Once the cell got across the Mississippi river, conditions became worse from a chasing standpoint. The storms become rain wrapped and embedded circulation was almost impossible to see for the remaining 45 minutes of the chase.

Unfortunately, I left the house without the camera, so these images were the best I could muster with a Razor cellphone functioning as a "mediocre" camera.

 

[Brian Stertz]

Back from a short chase in the Marshall-Sedalia MO area with zero severe wx observed...storms were flying by and very much embedded in tropical type rain. Things seemed to be rocking well northeast of me across NE Missouri where the sfc theta ridge was poking and shear was quite strong.

 

[Carla Bisby]

I chased 2 tor warned storms in Pike and Lincoln counties in MO. The best I could see due to the rain and lack of light was the southern edge of the meso on the 2nd storm near Moscow Mills. It was a fun chase. Thanks to Dan Robinson for nowcasting.

 

[Dick McGowan]

Jordan Wrecke and I sat in North Kansas City for a long time, debating which area looked the best and decided that NW Missouri looked good for a tornado. When we reached Bethany, MO, we saw this base on a low topped cell, that looked great, but was undercut by the cold front fairly quickly. I took all of these pics while driving, there was no time to stop thanks to quick storm motions.

We then tried to get ahead of it east, and watched what seemed to be a weak cone funnel develop just to the east of there about 5 miles and nearly was touching the ground. We watched it in our rear view mirror, and whatever it was, quickly went away. After making a wrong turn on a county road, I turned around and we were immediately hit by strong outflow winds, and at first, seemed to be pulling dirt off of the ground upward (in the opposite direction). It then sent tree branches flying and rocked my vehicle pretty good, which made me pretty nervous. We then tried to get back east, but the storm was moving fairly quickly and gave up on it. We ran into Glenn Briggs and Chris Rice in Trenton, chatted for a bit, then headed south to watch numerous updrafts go up, some which had great structure! Not a bad day, I wish that front wouldn't have killed our storm. I can't recall the name of these clouds, but they were obviously associated with the strong front.

 

[Sam Sagnella]

Overall this was definitely not an event to write home about, but Tommy Winning and I witnessed a couple of strong storms here in central Oklahoma during the evening hours of Tuesday, October 2. We sat two miles north of Tuttle for a couple of hours, watching a fairly isolated storm go up before others formed just to the SW and they merged together. The first storm was the 'best,' with a rather pronounced series of inflow band-type features extending out to the east, and some scud rising into the RFB for a period of time.
(click on each image for a larger version)


The shelf cloud from the first cluster formed as it was passing overhead; winds observed with it never got above say 20kt, if that.


As soon as the precip had passed (<2 min later), we immediately noticed that the surface cold front itself was very visible about 10 miles to our north. As it got closer, the sun was near setting and the whole scene was very beautiful.


Looking back SSE at the back edge of a storm W of OUN.


SW.


The cold front passing overhead.

Like I said, nothin too special, but some nice early fall photo ops from the Great State of Oklahoma.