2011-04-15 NOW: MS/AL/TN

[ChristianTerry]

Multiple Tornado Warnings right now in both Mississippi and Alabama. Reed Timmer had a tornado on the ground on his stream a few minutes ago on the Madison/Hinds county storm. CAPE and shear are looking nice right now and we could have many more tornadoes before the day is over.

 

[Jeff Duda]

KDGX probably nearly resolved part of a Hinds county tornado over the last few minutes and sets of volume scans. From the 1557Z - 1611Z scans, there was a clear small scale couplet (only a few bins wide along one range circle) with max delta-Vs around 75 - 90 kts consistently. It wasn't gate-to-gate shear, but since the couplet was between 10-20 nmi from KDGX and the 0.5 degree slice was at 600 - 1100 ft AGL, it's probable that this feature was at least a wall cloud, if not a tornadic vortex itself. It looks like a debris ball may have accompanied the 1602Z scan when the couplet was just east of Clinton, as there was a solid, isolated ball of up to 64.5 dBZ with minimal vertical extent. That feature disappeared after that scan. However, a ball of > 50 dBZ reflectivity remained with the couplet through the 1615Z scan (the couplet was harder to determine at this scan).

ADD: Looks like a tornado emergency continues for the warned area for this cell. Seems to me this particular area (between Jackson and Yazoo City) gets a lot of tornado emergencies. Hmm...

 

[D Washer]

That storm has produced damage in Clinton and Jackson, MS. Multiple trees and power lines down.

http://www.radioreference.com/apps/audio/?action=wp&feedId=7880

 

[ChristianTerry]

New Wall Cloud tightening on the TVN teams stream.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

Brett Adair streaming large, intense-looking tornado live --> http://www.chasertv.com/api/static_pages/lite/430_brett-adair.php
Tornado looks large, with tendrils that occassionally condense.

Edit: Looks like he's lost it in the rain now. The near-surface rotation looked very intense. This was the storm E of Butler, AL.

 

[Jeff Piotrowski]

Tornado is headed for Scooba MS near the MS/AL border as of 1:18 PM.

 

[Drew.Gardonia]

im becoming a bit concerned with the clearing of the skies over Arkansas, Missouri and portions of western Tennessee. with the sun coming out, and the cold front still off the west, the atmosphere could become very unstable this evening in these areas and we could see further redevelopment of storms with the potential for tornadic development.

looking at the RUC right now, and the cape values at the 23Z 0-1km helicity, showing values of 250-450, 0-3km helicity of values over 550, with CAPE in 2000 j/kg range, could make for a potential outbreak this evening in parts of as well as most of AL/MS. people need to be paying attention to the weather.

corrections welcome if I'm missing anything or looking at something wrong/inaccurately.

edit: as I suspected, the NWS just issued a mesoscale discussion for portions of Eastern MO, and Western TN and Eastern Arkansas and North Central MS!

i bet a tornado wach will follow soon.

 

[Drew.Gardonia]

A tornado watch was issued for the area about a half hour ago.

sorry, im still slow at this but learning.


Tenessee still not included in that watch as of yet, but I expect that will change in a few hours.


edit: im so slow, it took me 30 minutes to write that up lol, i kept going back and forth between the shear, instability, and dewpoints, trying to be as accurate as I possibly can.


looking outside my office window here at work, the lower level jet is really kicking in hard, the trees are whipping around something fierce here in Murfreesboro.

 

[Dave Gore]

Half mile wide wedge reported with the storm passing into Alabama from Mississippi. Tornado emergency issued for Geiger, Panola, New West Green, and Pleasant Ridge AL.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

I couldn't tell very well, but it looks like Vincent Webb (SS streaming: http://www.severestudios.com/cgi-bin/player.pl?username=vincent.webb&uid=496 ) may have had a nice tornado SE of Jackson. The storm is tor-warned, and he may have a better view soon.

Widespread strong low-level shear + low LCLs + weak-moderate instability + favorable discrete storm mode = potential significant tornado outbreak today.

 

[Jeff Duda]

Kind of surprised this event isn't getting more attention on the forum. Things are really cooking now with several isolated supercells, some training over the same areas that were hit a few hours ago, and redevelopment is continuous back towards the cold front. Shear is pretty high right now, with 0-1 km values > 30 kts over a large portion of MS/AL and 0-1, 0-3, and effective SRH values sufficiently high for strong tornadoes over a similarly large area. SBCAPE is nearing 3500 J/kg in southern MS with slightly lower values leading up to a gradient of no surface-based instability in N AL where ongoing convection has kept the surface cooler.

This is one of those days where keeping everyone in the affected areas on their toes constantly is going to be very important to keeping people up to date on storm locations and threat areas. Hope people down there have weather radios and can get warnings.

 

[Jeff Duda]

The storm southwest of Tuscaloosa, which I think may be the same storm I talked about passing near KDGX a few hours ago, is a beast! Latest scans from KBMX show a cyclic or double meso structure with two strong areas of G2G shear. At least one of these areas is rain wrapped.

 

[Chip Redmond]

I have been watching this cell also with reports of up to 3/4 mile wide tornado on the ground. It has tracked a long way, however the cells to the south may rob its resources here in the next half hour or so.

Very strong inflow to this storm and it appears like it will pass just south of Tuscaloosa.

If it were to weaken slightly and lose a likely tornado on the ground right now, it would drift a bit farther north. Lets hope that if it does, it doesn't cycle or else the city could take a direct hit.

 

[Jeff Duda]

You can tell it's getting hard for the NWS warning meteorologists. A new warning includes text that "multiple circulations may spawn more than one tornado". The town of Union, AL is currently under 3 different tornado warnings.

 

[Chip Redmond]

It is definitely a conglomerate of mesocyclones and areas of rotation over a very small area. Big issue with all of them now is that they are nearly completely rain-wrapped and there would be no way to get a visual. Hopefully the three warnings are enough to tell people to get the heck to shelter.