2011-04-15 REPORTS: IL/KY/TN/MS/AL/GA/LA

[Christopher E. Kincaid]

I caught a large, low contrast funnel or possible brief tornado near Mason City, IL. It and the wall cloud quickly became rain wrapped and impossible to see. Alot of false funnel cloud reports today. Many were in areas that I was at or had recently been. A nice local chase that only used about a 1/4 tank of gas.


IMG_2772 by toodamnice, on Flickr

First time I was ever in two tor warnings at the same time! This was taken when I saw the funnel in the pic above.

IMG_2777 by toodamnice, on Flickr

A structure shot... best I could do with all the low clouds around.

IMG_2783 by toodamnice, on Flickr

EDIT: Turns out this was an EF1 tornado according to the NWS in Lincoln, IL. My first of the season.

 

[John Farley]

No tornadoes for me, though I did get on a TOR-warned storm near Edwardsville, and certainly saw some nice storm structure, though keeping up was a challenge. Probably good the warned storm didn't tornado, since the meso went nearly over my house! This picture is from an earlier SVR-warned storm:

A few more pictures from both storms at: http://www.johnefarley.com/chase41511.htm

I will post a full report to the URL above as time permits.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Played with this setup in the STL metro. Log/photos from the day:

http://stormhighway.com/blog2011/april1511a.shtml

 

[Adam Lucio]

Caught a [real] funnel near Farmersville today. Local law enforcement reported this to have touched down but I am not a believer, funnel never made it much lower than this although it did persist for a little while. Storms were cold core in nature, very unique type of chase setup for IL. Never really played storms of this type and found them to be quite enjoyable. Good structure and for some reason it seemed a heck of allot easier keeping up with storms moving N as opposed to E. At the time I got the funnel I was sandwiched in between two tornado warned storms, I could see a wall cloud on the one to the west, and then the funnel on the one to the east with a mammatus fiilled sky in between. It was a nice chase on the way home from a rather crappy chase in Oklahoma.

Anyways, video still of the funnel/sherrifnado mentioned above:

Full log soon...

 

[Trey Alvey]

Intercepted multiple tornadoes in Alabama and several insane mesocyclones
Watch video >

 

[Paul Hadfield]

I also watched the parade to march N along I-55. No tornadoes but no complaints either for only being in the next county.

iPhone 4 tripoded (slight editing w/ noise reduction)

More HERE.

Edit 04/17 - Video compilation added
Watch video >

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

I followed the same supercell that Adam Lucio was on from Farmersville up north of Springfield, IL where it was finally overtaken by the line.

Video capture of the funnel cloud that was reported as a tornado near Farmersville:

Later on it just never had the tornado producing look, though it had nice banded structure at times. Think the mid-level winds were a little bit too backed so these things were moving northwest and sucking in their own cold inflow. While in the inflow region of the supercells I was constantly in a cold drizzly wind. It eventually went HP and was overtaken by the squall line along the cold front.

 

[Brad Emel]

I played West Central Illinois today, starting north of Edwardsville. I was able to film several discrete mini supercells before they merged into the line. There was a lot of low level rotation today, but I didn't see any tornadoes.

The structure was unique and photogenic today. I probably watched 3 cell/line mergers, 3 or 4 rotating wall clouds, and at least one funnel cloud. Nothing came close to the ground though.

Watch video >

Video taken using MesoDome hardware & software.

 

[Kevin Rolfs]

Colt Forney, Isaac Pato and I left Norman around 3 am for this event. We ended up missing the Jackson tornado by about 15 minutes but this is what we saw along I-20 as we passed by.

Watch video >

We then stopped in Jackson for a while since we couldn't catch the storm that produced the Jackson tornado. We ate and waited for the activity to the SW of Jackson to get it's act together and once it did we sprung for it. We made our way towards Puckett, MS and waited for the first cell to get closer. It was struggling for a while and we tried to follow but poor road options forced us to drop south the next storm which was taking roughly the same track. It was struggling as well, but road options this time allowed us follow. It eventually made a right turn which allowed for an even easier pursuit. As we approached Alabama from east of Quitman, MS, is really started got crankin with a nice, large wall cloud and decent low level rotation. We stopped on the MS/AL border and watched as the rotation tightened up quickly and a big bowl funnel developed with vortices dancing in the rain curtains. We continued into Alabama and lost sight of the base in order to get out ahead and keep up with it. Just east of Butler, AL we ran into frequent tennis ball sized hail with a few baseballs mixed in. It produced again near Dayton, AL however poor visibility didn't allow for any good video or pictures. We pursued until Selma, AL where we decided to call it a day. It was very successful chase! The coloring and contrast on the storms was better than anything I've seen all year, can't wait to see look at my pics.

Watch video >

 

[Tony Cook]

De Kalb to Scooba, MS EF3

Caught the EF3 that tracked from west of De Kalb to east of Scooba, MS and into AL on 4/15. Quick pic of tornado near its peak intensity on the MS side:

Full report:
http://twistedtexas.blogspot.com/2011/04/chase-report-15-april-2011-de-kalb-to.html

TonyC

 

[J Brooks]

We got on the Hinds Co. cell shortly before it went tornado warned getting into position in front of it just south of Raymond, Ms. We sat there for a few minutes, and then we saw it make a hard left turn toward Clinton, Ms. From there we had to move back north into Jackson to get back in front, and we ended up about 2.5 miles east of the tornado as it moved through the east side of Clinton into Jackson. Here's a picture we took as it was doing EF-3 damage along Hwy 80. I'm not entirely sure if we were seeing the tornado or the wall cloud in front of it due to trees, but we saw a power flash right in front of it about 10-15 seconds before this was taken.

Here's one with contrast and saturation boosted way up.