2006-03-12 REPORTS: KS, MO, IL, IA, OK, AR

[Wayne Sclesky]

March 12, 2006

My chase day started in Miami Florida on March 11th at 3:00PM. Well it really wasn’t a chase day, I was moving back to Kansas City. I had spent the last year in Miami doing beauty and fashion photography. Got tired of Miami and decided to head back to the Central U.S. I stopped in Murfreesboro, TN at 5:00am on the 12th. When I arrived at the motel and connected my laptop to their WiFi and got the day 1 out look I knew the drive the rest of the way might get rough. Right through a good portion of the area I had to pass through to get to KC was the elusive “high-risk†circle. I was going to sleep in, but decided I should leave at 8:30am and try to beat any storms that were going to fire up.

I woke up at 8:00am on the 12th. I checked the SPC page, noticing their warnings in the KC area, I called my Mom and girlfriend to warn them of the impending storms. I hopped in the car and got headed to KC.

Most of the drive was very uneventful. As I got the Saint Louis area I started paying more attention to the skies. Through my Sprint PCS I can get access to radar and some forecasting data through “My-Castâ€. Pretty handy to have as long as I can get a signal. As I was about 30 miles from Columbia I noticed the first couple of cells that were heading up through Sedalia and would be coming close to Columbia or Boonville. Not having any maps to navigate with or my weather radio I thought it would be best to stop at a friends in Columbia, wait for the storms to pass over I-70 then continue on to KC.

I got to my friends and pulled up the NWS radar and started watching TV to get storm information. From the radar and looking at the SRV it looked like the current areas of rotation would pass to the west of Columbia, however the media was projecting the storms to head right to Columbia. My friend had no basement and had just left for church. I sat there for a few minutes and the storm chaser in me took hold. Better to chase than be chased!

I left his residence, which is on the west side of Columbia. I made my way to Highway 63 and proceeded south to get into a better viewing position. I took my first images at exactly 5:10PM. I observed a large wedge tornado that appeared to be weak. The only reason it was visible was due to the rain forming the wedge shape. This persisted for about 30 seconds before dissipating or being occluded from precipitation. I watched several updrafts turn slightly, but no organized rotation that I would call a “well-defined†wall cloud.

As soon as the storm was clear I proceeded north on 63 to I-70. Remember I wasn’t chasing, I was trying to get home. And actually I was going to surprise my girlfriend by getting back to KC a day earlier than I told her. Up to this point I was telling her I was in Georgia and not anywhere near the mess I was about to really get in. I got onto I-70 and proceeded West. After crossing the Lamine River about mile Marker 90 I came to a huge traffic jam. I spent most of my time sitting and it took me at least an hour to go about a mile. Traffic was being detoured onto county road AE to J hwy, then back onto I-70. I will assume the traffic backup was related to the first storms crossing over the interstate. Now, however there were more storms approaching the interstate with current tornado warnings. As I got to J hwy. and I-70 I was on the phone with my brother having him give me some now-casting and try to get me down I-70 without running into a tornado or large hail. All the while I would intermittently talk to my girlfriend acting like I was stuck in a traffic jam in Georgia! We decided I should head to the clover leaf at I-70 and 65 hwy and reassess the situation. Once I got to that point and reassessed, it was decided that it wouldn’t be a good idea to proceed down I-70. The hook from the storm was running along I-70 and was headed towards my location.

I decided to head back to J highway and I-70. If need be I could go south on J to 65 highway, or get back on to I-70 once the storm had cleared. As I sat on the south side of I-70, I was being hit by massive inflow, through the lightning flashes I could see a large wedge tornado working its way to my northwest. My guess is it was about 1-2 miles from my location. My brother thought it would be best for me to head South on J and hit 65 hwy a few miles south of I-70 and then proceed back north to I-70. That is exactly what I did. I was very relieved to get onto I-70. It was at this time I had to tell my girlfriend about how I was going to surprise her, but I was concerned for my safety and wanted her to know I was almost there. More storms were approaching from the Southwest and I knew I had to keep things moving to get west before I ran into them crossing the interstate. Just when I was thinking things were looking good…once again…traffic jam!

this was shot at 3200 ISO on my Canon 5d handheld at 2.5 seconds from in my car!

For at least 20 minutes there was no movement whatsoever of the traffic. There is no worse feeling than knowing that in a few minutes I might find myself in a ditch hoping for the best! Of course another storm was headed right towards my location with a current tornado warning. Slowly traffic got moving. This time the wreck was from a semi that had been flipped over onto a couple of cars that were parked under an overpass. This was from the tornado that I had just witnessed a few minutes before. If I would have proceeded instead of waiting when I did back at J highway and I-70…I know that I would have been in that mess or very close.

After the last traffic jam there was only one more storm to beat before I was finally in the clear, it was once I got past 13hwy and I-70 that my brother said that I am finally in the clear. That was a great feeling of relief. It took me 5 hours to drive 90 miles. If it were not for the traffic backups on the interstate I would have been fine, and perhaps would have even stopped to get some better photos. I have been thinking about getting wxworx system, after this event, I am thinking even more about it!

 

[Sean McMullen]

I was chasing sunday with my fiance Katie along with Jeff and Kathy Piotrowski. We began the day by chasing the "quad state supercells" all the way to about 40-50 miles east of Columbia, MO. Along the way we did get a couple nice tornadoes but what I would like to report on are the huge wedge night time tornadoes we chased after being stuck on I-70 for hours and watching the storms head right at us on radar that had developed on the KS, MO border. We just happened to get around the destruction on I-70 to witness two tornadoes just to the north of I-70 in a feild, one small, one huge! :blink: we followed them on Hwy 65 north of I-70, and then both Jeff and I's XM went down, did anyone else run into this problem? Beleive it or not we then headed south on Hwy 65 south of I-70 and intercepted another gigantic wedge tornado heading right for us! :blink: I was able to get pictures of them all due to relentless amount of lightning and powerflashes. Here is a link to where you can see them. Kathy was nice enough to post my pics ( by the way they were all vid grabs) on her website since I don't have my own website. You can also go to her website to see her chase log and pictures as well.

These will be my first pictures I've posted on ST by the way, ENJOY!

http://www.twisterchasers.com/tornadoes_at...htm#Sean%20Post

http://www.twisterchasers.com/2006_storm_c..._highlights.htm

 

[Shane Reichert]

My first real chase and I saw a tornado!! It was pretty exciting but I also scared the crap out of myself. More on that later. The only chasing I had done before this was anything local. I'm just starting to get into the whole idea and learning lots.

I didn't leave here, Springfield MO, until about 1 pm. I didn't even have a power inverter to power my laptop or vid camera, so I stopped by walmart on the way out. I checked radar and decided to head toward Clinton, MO. I tried to check radar along the way there but couldn't find any wifi spots so was just hoping the storms I targeted held their course. Once in Clinton, I got gas, food, and checked radar again. I decided to head a little farther north up to Warrensburg. Just as I left Clinton, it became tornado warned. I thought about heading back but knew I could intercept the two cells as they headed northeast.

Once in Warrensburg I headed east on highway 50 towards Sedalia. As I reached Sedalia I heard on the radio there was a 1/2 mile wide tornado spotted south on 65. I was right in the middle of town, being pounded with hail, and couldn't see anything. To be honest, I was pretty damn scared the tornado would come from the south and nail me from the side. I even stopped at a gas station to take shelter, but the door was locked. I decided to just keep going hoping we woulnd't intercept paths. This actually turned out to be in my favor because I would see the tornado just as it was lifting just to the east of town.

As I headed out the east side of town I first saw a nice rainbow, then there it was: my first tornado. At the time I wasn't even excited. I was just relieved to know where the tornado was instead of driving blind through rain and hail. I saw it for maybe 30 seconds before it dissapeared. I tried catching up as it moved toward Columbia but was moving too fast.

Here is part of the video: http://www.theawesomecontest.com/shane/sedaliatornado412.mov

 

[Scott Currens]

March 12, 2006 will defiantly go as one of my most memorable chases. The day started with a 2:00 am forecast before I left for work. I decided to go ahead and give it a shot despite the 90+ kt 500mb winds. My plan was simple, get on a good road in front of a supercell and use it to observe/avoid the tornado as it goes flying by.

At around 10 AM the remnants of the Lawrence baseball hail producing supercell crossed the warmfront and dumped pea to marble sized hail on MCI while I was working.

When I got off work at 12:40 pm a string of supercells had developed along the dryline from south of Lawrence trailing SSW into SE Kansas. I targeted the northern most cell as it entered the KC metro area. When this cell approached it looked ragged and outflow dominant so I quickly dropped south and east to a major supercell south of Harrisonville, MO. This cell looked impressive on radar but not so good in person. It was also ragged and HP. I wasn’t interested in trying to punch the rain curtains to see what was in there so once again I dropped south and east to the next supercell.

This next supercell was the Monster that produced more than 20 tornadoes as it raced from SE Kansas all the way to Michigan. Unfortunately, it didn’t look all that great when I was in perfect position to view the storm near Butler, MO. Its updraft base was ragged and disorganized, and its updraft was leaned over at a 45-degree angle. This storm was tail-end-charley so I tried my hardest to stay with it as long as possible.

I lucked out because the storm rapidly became organized as it followed a SW-NE road from Clinton to Windsor. I observed a well-defined funnel from 3:50 to 4:03 PM near Windsor, MO. A few minutes later I crossed its damage path 4 miles east of Windsor. The damage appeared to be F1 intensity.

My SW-NE road now turned to the east so I started to fall further behind the storm. At the same time, a new or previously obscured tornado became visible to the north near Green Ridge, MO.

As the supercell and I approached Sedalia, MO its storm scale rotation was violent. I was about 4 miles south of the tornado as it crossed 65 on the south side of Sedalia. I crossed the tornados damage 1 ½ miles south of Sedalia and was surprised by how weak it was. It produced only F0-F1 damage along a narrow path. ½ mile later I found out that was just a satellite tornado. The real damage track was 1/3 to ½ mile wide with F2 like damage to some businesses and trees. The tornado was now moving into more populated areas of Sedalia and I didn’t want to get in the way of emergency personnel, so I let that tornado go, and tried to flank the storm by going north to I-70 and east to Columbia. I meet up with the Piotrowski’s on I-70 as we were trying to beat the storm to Columbia. This strategy failed because tornadoes associated with another supercell had crossed I-70 less than an hour before. People were parked under overpasses inches off the road with cars whizzing by in heavy rain at 70+ MPH. For the life of me I don’t understand how people think this is a way to protect their families. Eventually I reached Columbia at 5:35 PM well behind my target supercell and decided to call it a day.

My route home, I-70 westbound was closed because of tornado damaged vehicles in the roadway. I had to find an alternate route home. I tried to take a state road that weaves its way from Lamine, MO to Marshall, MO. This route was blocked 2 miles east of Blackwater, MO by what appeared to be a significant tornado’s damage swath. At 7:30 PM I was forced to take muddy bob’s roads in an effort to get around this damage path. LOL! Did I forget to mention that another violent tornadic supercell was racing towards me a 45 MPH? Luckily, I made it back to pavement and proceeded to a point 5 miles WNW of Arrow Rock, MO.

This area was on high ground and had few trees so I decided to take some lightning stills and watch for the approaching tornado.

At 8:29 PM I could make out a large blocky wallcloud/tornado scraping the ground to the WSW. At the same time golf ball hail began falling so I repositioned ESE 1 mile. At 8:35 I was on the phone with the KC NWS office reporting the hail and wallcloud to my west when I observed another tornado developing close by.

It looked a lot like this one, but at night, and moving much faster. LOL!

With the NWS still on the phone I reported the new tornado while repositioning further east.

A new tornado then appeared a ½ mile to the south of the main tornado then quickly disappeared from view. I believe this was a satellite tornado. (I'm not so sure now. The NWS talks about two simultaneous tornadoes with parallel damage tracks that eventually merge and cause F3 damage.)

The main tornado continued ENE for 12 minutes before I lost sight of it. I then turned around and headed west. I crossed a narrow swath of F0-F1 damage associated with the satellite tornado. ½ mile later crossed a ¼ wide damage swath. Two houses received what looked like F2 damage. I then called NWS and report the damage.

www.violentplains.com/2006

Scott Currens
www.violentplains.com

 

[Joey Ketcham]

Here is a clip I uploaded of the wall cloud from Montgomery County on Sunday, I sped it up to 500% to make the rotation more visible.

http://www.kschaser.com/wallcloud.wmv

 

[Mike Hardiman]

Hi Folks,

Like Evan Bookbinder, I was also working the event over here in Central Illinois, and have been involved with the damage surveys out this way. There's been some challenges with trying to reconstruct damage paths... especially in Southeastern Logan County south of Mount Pulaski and Cornland.

This may be a long shot, but if there were any chasers on the storm beyond (Northeast) of Springfield, any info, video, etc you could share would be appreciated.

Also, by reading the earlier topics, it seems like there were at least a handful of chasers who saw the tornado as it moved into the southwest side of Springfield as it crossed I-72. So far, we haven't heard of any video of images, but if there are any you could share, we would certainly appreciate it.

This will be a memorable event in Central Illinois, and already we've had numerous requests for more spotter talks over the past few days. I imagine we'll see an increase in turnout for the remaining classes this year. Some degree of silver lining, I suppose.

My work email is [email protected] ...

-Mike

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Supercell crossing into MO near Amoret MO. This was the one just north of the southern supercell of supercells.

The mother of all supercells as it crossed into MO. I'm just outside of Rich Hill MO.

I really never tried to keep after either of them very hard. I went east and it was obvious it would be an extreme challenge to stay with them. I knew I wanted to give the storms some time before I was on them this day, but evidently this was not enough time for them.

Hail from the night supercell that went over Concordia MO. I was sitting in its path before deciding to flee north out of the way. I dropped back south to where I was to pick those up.

I have a bunch more pictures and words on my site, including several radar grabs. Here is one I made that I think is crazy. It's the same map with one radar grab during the day and one at night near Sedalia showing how close those 4 supercells tracked. The storm gods were really after that area.

More info/images here: March 12, 2006

 

[Carla Bisby]

This is a long report as I chased 3 storms over the course of 10 hours.

First of all, thanks to Dan Robinson for his excellent nowcasting for this day.

Eolia, MO chase:
After having been up most of the night I slept late and didn’t start my chase until about 5:00pm. I headed north out of STL to intercept the supercell headed towards Bowling Green. Dan said the storm was going to cross a bit south of there and recommended I go just a couple of miles north of the Pike county line near Eolia and watch the meso pass just north of there. Well, I went about 1 mile farther north than he said (big mistake). I could see the rain free base to my west and thought I was far enough south. It was dusk and I was losing light quickly. I didn’t realize my mistake until I saw the lowering w/3 cone shaped fingers flying towards me from my west/southwest. If it had been daytime I would have assessed the grassy median separating me from the south bound lanes and if possible crossed it and flew south but in the low light I could not have done that. My 2 options were: 1. stay were I was and let it pass over me, or 2. fly north and try to get out of the meso on the north side. I was not thrilled with the idea of flying north but I was even less thrilled with the idea of being a sitting duck so I floored it to go north. Just a little bit north I cleared a tree line and saw a very large lowering about ¾ of the way to the ground crossing the highway about 30 yards in front of me. I thought I may witness a tragedy since people were driving right under that lowering oblivious to the extreme danger they were in. As it moved east (it was at least ¼ mile wide) I headed north but had to pull over since the RFD started blowing me off the road. Beautiful RFD though. Very wide clear slot and the moonlight was shining through it so the towers north and south of me were illuminated by moonlight while I saw clear sky above me. I attempted to catch the cell again in IL but it was moving too fast for me to catch up with so I headed back down Hwy 61 towards STL. As I neared the 61/70 interchange I heard on the radio that some storms were headed toward Columbia and I wasn’t ready to call it a night yet so I pulled into a gas station to get some caffeine. To my pleasant discovery a DOW belonging to the NBC station in STL was there so I took a couple of pics of it, called Dan for an update and fueled up on caffeine.

Jonesburg, MO chase:
My target was the area between Columbia and Jefferson City off hwy 54 but Dan said the cell was right turning and had me move back east a few miles. As it continued to right turn more I kept moving east a few miles at a time. I had pulled off near High Hill and had a great view of the rain free base but felt I was too close to the pathway of a funnel so I went a few more miles east to Jonesburg. The storm crossed hwy 70 to the west of me so I headed north to get a better view. I could see the base and RFD. I saw a wall of black movement and heard some roaring but I dismissed it as just being some intense rain and wind since the traffic on 70 made it difficult to hear anything. Going a bit further north I was able to see a WC to my right and ran across some minor tree debris in the road. I stopped to watch the storm but then saw headlights coming up the road behind me so I drove about 10 yards north and turned onto a side road. The lightning was almost constant so every couple of seconds I had a great view of the action. The people who lived at the house with the tree debris came into their front yard and were freaking out and wandering all over with flashlights. Then they drove to the end of the side road I was on to check on their neighbors. I was thinking they were totally overacting since I thought they just got a little rain and wind and a high funnel, so what’s the big deal, they were panicked over nothing. I only saw a little bit of wind damage in their yard and didn’t see anything across the road at their neighbor’s. Disorganized funnels kept lowering then dissipating until one very well defined cone funnel lowered. The portion of the funnel that was visible went about ½ way to the ground. There was a tree line about ½ mile away that blocked my view of the ground so I could not tell if there was rotation at ground level. Dan called it in to the NWS. The funnel only lasted about 20 seconds. Then it went back to the cycle of producing short disorganized looking funnels then dissipating them. A guy in a red sports car pulled up next to me and asked “did a funnel just cross over here, I saw it from the highway?†I was losing visibility as the storm moved east so I told him I was heading east and ran to my car. I went back to 70 then to route A and headed north. From there I had again a great view. At one point the WC was very wide and lowered into a large upside down triangle shape and was about 1/2 way to the ground. Then it would rise back up. I should have stayed right where I was and enjoyed the show and tried to get some pics but I was greedy to keep chasing it so I headed north on A and ended up losing it in the hills and trees. I went back to hwy 70 to head towards STL hoping to intercept the cell that was headed there from Rolla.

Troy/Silex, MO chase:
When I reached Wentzville I heard a tor warning on NOAA radio for the Troy area so I called Dan for an update. He said go north of Troy so I did but my phone battery was depleted and I lost contact with him. I entered precip so I turned back since I didn’t want to be “blind†in a storm. Probably was a good call since a touchdown was confirmed in Silex just north of where I stopped.

After returning home I heard a tor had touched down in Jonesburg and I was surprised since I thought it was just funnels there. I was even more surprised the next day when I saw aerial photos a news station had taken. There was not only a touchdown but major damage. I live 45 minutes from there so after work yesterday I drove out there as I was curious how close I was to the touchdown. Major findings from yesterday:

1. The tor was on the ground when it crossed hwy 70. The pavement is ok but a street sign on the south side was bent in half and the field on the right side has a scour path.
2. When I was in Jonesburg watching the storm NW/N of me and assumed I was seeing and hearing wind and rain I was actually seeing and hearing the tor as it passed about ¾ a mile in front of me.
3. When I drove north and passed the “tree debris house†if I had turned my brights on or driven another 20 yards north I would have seen a demolished house covering the road.
4. When I turned on to the small side road and watched the funnels come and go across the field if I had looked 30 yards to my left I would have seen about 10 tractor trailers strewn about the field like Tonka toys.
5. I realize now why the people in the “tree debris house†were freaking out and checking on their neighbors. Their house was just nicked by the tor. Their neighbor’s house was demolished. I’m not a damage expert but I’d say it was an F2/F3.

I feel a bit like a heel for not stopping and helping the people on that street but I had no idea I was just yards away from a major damage path. It was in the middle of the night and all the electric was out. Also, I wasn’t focusing on ground level but was looking up at the sky. If I had any clue the tor had just hit there I would have checked to make sure everyone in the damaged homes were ok.

 

[Paul Hadfield]

Over this past year I have been reworking old clips in Sony Vegas Movie Studio that were once rendered in Windows Movie Maker so to bring the aspect ratio current as well as achieve better quality. The other night as I was looking at ways to present my March 12, 2006 encounter in NW Macon County IL, I noticed that in the Sony program you can skip through a clip frame by frame. Importing one of two clips I shot that night, to my amazement, I was able to pull stills I was previously unable to do in WMM thus revealing details previously unseen. In the first still you can see a tornado extending down to the ground and on a map it would either be the last or second to last tornado to set down in Central Illinois.

Here's where it gets fun, skipping one by one through all 1,823 frames, I saved 262 stills which had a hint of lightning or moonlight that would enable features to appear. Importing these files as single layer into Photoshop, I dropped a brightness/contrast layer to further reveal detail and rendered the whole thing as a rough time lapse gif animation. Rather than embed the file which is large and will slow down the page, check it out via the link.

GIF 4.67 MB
http://pawleewurx.com/st/031206c.gif

 

[Paul Hadfield]

Just reminiscing on the ten year anniversary and offering a link drop to compensate for some of the above missing images/information.

http://pawleewurx.blogspot.com/2016/03/ten-years-ago-six-state-supercell.html

 

[Peter B. Creedon]

Was my first chase. Hot as heck all that day. The previous day IIRC we had thunderstorms come through at night, but the real action was that Sunday. Went up into Lincoln and Montgomery Counties. My Mazda Protege could barely handle the rough roads of Lincoln and Montgomery Counties. Saw some decent structure even if it was near dusk.

 

[Joseph Meyer]

This might be an incredibly long shot, but I am desperate.

I am currently doing a massive research project on the March 12, 2006 tornado outbreak, particularly in Missouri. As this event happened over 15 years ago, a lot of the media whether it be photos or videos from the various tornadoes is lost. I am looking for as much as I can to study the tornadoes & media would be wonderful to look over!

If anyone has any photos or videos from March 12, 2006 that they still have I would LOVE to see them. Shoot me an email [email protected] if you are willing to provide or have any questions!