2011-04-22 REPORTS: TX/OK/AR/MO/IL

[Ben Holcomb]

Not an overall very good chase. I headed out east from Norman at 5 pm with the intention of dropping south, but got on the storms north of I-40 because of the tornado warnings and Mike Scantlins tornado report. Never saw anything impressive, and the storm was outflow dominant with a nice shelf cloud most of the evening.

Watch video >

My recap is up at http://www.benholcomb.com/Chase-Accounts/20110422

 

[Mikey Gribble]

Initial target was Pauls Valley, then decided to ease on south a bit and set up shop west of Ardmore. We sat patiently and watched the towers to our north go up. I was absolutely torn on whether to go after the storm that produced the Byars tornadoes or wait for something south of that. We decided to go north after the Byars storm. I knew we could catch it (would have caught it at Pauls Valley), but it was taking a long time on the back roads out there and I was a little worried about all the new cells that kept popping up off the flank of the storm up there. When a discrete cell started going up (between the Red River and Byars storm) I thought we were in business. It was all alone by itself. So we stopped our pursuit of the northern storm and dropped south to the new cell, which quickly the bed lol. It's not fun to be staring at an orphan anvil with only an hour and a half of daylight left when you are 40 miles from the nearest storm. So our only option left was the Red River storm which was too far south for my taste with this setup. No other options at that point though, so we did what we had to do and jumped on that one. It looked high based, but had a weak circulation with striations around it. Stayed with that storm until dark and then called it a day.

So I learned a couple lessons I've been taught many times. Don't second guess your forecast and target when waiting for storms to fire. Stick to your guns
and stay put. In my experience, rarely do good things happen when you deviate from your target at the last minute. I knew I wanted a storm that was going to cross I35 in that Pauls Valley to Davis area. For some reason I still don't fully understand why I kept creeping south.
Lesson #2, always cheat downstream. I should have stayed with the Byars storm until I knew the storm that was trying to develop south of it between there and the Red River becamse established. It easy to drop back to a new storm coming at you, not so easy to catch one going away. If I would have stayed with the Byars storm until I knew the storm that was trying to go south of it got going then I would have kept my options open and would probably be posting tornado pictures right now. Amateur mistake and I paid for it. On to the next one.

 

[Colt R Forney]

Kevin Rolfs, Isaac Pato, Scott Peake and I were sitting right in the inflow notch of the second storm by Byars, OK. Saw one funnel and a nice white tornado that was on the ground for about 30 seconds. The inflow winds were gusting over 60 mph as it was shredding trees around us and destroyed a tin outbuilding that blew into and took out some power lines about a quarter mile behind us. The yellow/orange tint to the sky underneath the base was beautiful! Here is our video.

Watch video >

 

[cedwards]

I chased the Storm from Pauls Valley to Ada, OK. I witnessed a brief funnel cloud east of Paoli. The cell looked to become disorganized and I got east of it to film the incredible lightning it had. I stopped just north-west of Ada and got some great lightning shots and pictures of the storm structure to my west as it produced the tornado. Then on the south-east side of ADA if got in a hurricane hailer, but it was so dark, video was pointless.

 

[Bobby Prentice]

Byars, OK tornadic supercell

Greg Stumpf, Chris Spannagle, and I chased the Byars, OK tornadic supercell from its inception in northwest Garvin Co, OK around 2230Z. until we had to bail south on it at Straford, OK (northeast Garvin Co.) at 0105Z.

The storm appear to fire on the ne-sw oriented dryline and took its time organizing. Lot's of updraft/small cells moving northeast which finally developed into a supercell near Paoli around 00Z and took a hard right turn eastbound. An intense barrage of close cloud-to-ground lightning was an unmistakable announcement of this transformation to us.

We followed the supercell north on OK133 and then east on OK59 through Byars, OK to US177. The supercell was HP with a striated barrel updraft and continuous lighting . The CG lighting made it dangerous to shoot from outside Greg's Faraday cage. Plus, the continuous light/moderate rain made it uncomfortable when we did step outside. This was too bad because we were able to observed at least a few rotating wall clouds, possible funnels, and occlusions through the breaks in the trees and murk to our west and northwest.

We began to bail south from OK59/US 177, but observed a new meso to our west. So we parked about 3.5 miles north of Stratford, OK to watch it. This is the one that produced a rather large tornado near Byars, OK, but it was rain-wrapped and we couldn't see it 6-8 miles to our west-northwest. Nice signature on GR2 with it.

A short time later while parked on US 177 3 miles north of Stratford, OK we observed a rope funnel cloud 2/3rds of the way to the ground about 2-3 miles to our northwest at 8:00 pm CDT(0100Z). Ground contact could not be confirmed. It appeared to dissipate after about 30 seconds. Then at 8:02 pm (0102Z), we observed it again as a whispy rope tornado with condensation at ground level confirmed. Tornado moved slowly from right to left from our viewpoint and ended at approximately 8:05pm (0105Z). The tornado was likely weak considering it couldn't fully condense out from top to bottom. We had to bail southbound on US177 before the tornado ended due to the rapid approach of a wet RDF to our west.

Robin Tanamachi was able to shoot better video than me of the event:
2011-04-22: Byars, OK Tornadoes by Robin Tanamachi

Robin's crew observed another funnel cloud to the distant northwest that we did not notice at the time. This might have been the earlier large tornado we couldn't see through the HP murk to our west.

 

[Todd Friskey]

This is our first post storm report so bear with me as I describe this. My son Matt and I with his girfriend decided we would chase close to home. We left SW MO sometime before 3PM. Our initial target was Muskogee, OK, we wanted to be near the turnpike just in case. We made it as far as Miami, OK when the towers were already blossoming. We decided in a Taco Bell parking lot to chase this storm in Ottawa Co that looked like it was going severe.

We decided to stick with this particular storm using GRL3 on the laptop to keep us out of the hail cores as much as possible driving a black 2010 Subaru Impreza. The rest of the photos are taken from the side of the road in Ottawa Co on highway 60 we were near Fairland, OK.

After I did this I guess I could of loaded larger photos. I made them 800 x 600. They look better in the album.

 

[Jesse Risley]

I finally got my chase log from last night semi-completed, or at least enough of it to share. I chased with Jeremy Degenhart, Tom Williams and Eric Apel. We targeted just east of Columbia, MO and got on the supercell that would later produce the flurry of tornadic activity near KSTL when it was in its early stages near Jefferson City, MO. We followed the cell east as it trekked between I-70 and the Missouri River, producing wall clouds, possible funnels and up to 2" hail (largest we witnessed personally). We finally got back in front of the cell as it was moving out of the New Melle, MO area after producing confirmed structural damage.

When the cell neared I-60/US 40 just south of I-70, we witnessed rapid rotation very near the ground and funnels that quickly got wrapped in rain, and may or may not have actually been in contact with the ground. The pendant lowering quickly scraped across I-64 as it took a beeline for the airport and surrounding subdivisions, though no damage of noteworthiness was visible immediately east of I-64, so I suspect the tornado lifted briefly after hitting north of New Melee before moving into Maryland Heights and areas down I-70 towards the river.

We got back across the river just in time to witness power flashes as the tornado moved across the Mississippi River and produced what the NWS was confirming as a reported TOR on the ground in Pontoon Beach, IL. At that juncture, we decided to head back west on I-70 to get document some of the damage near the airport, as the system congealed into more of a linear structure with embedded circulations. All in all a very successful, yet tactically difficult chase due to terrain and poor road networks west of KSTL.

Full chase report available here.

 

[Brandon Jenkins]

Wasn't able to leave work until 3:30pm. Arrived in Gainesville and noticed storms going up near Wichita Falls. Took off west and intercepted the storm south of the Red River. Wasn't treated to any tornadoes but what a structure show it put on.

 

[Charles Kuster]

I also targeted Ardmore, Oklahoma, but quickly decided to move north towards the storms that formed just to the north and west of Pauls Valley, OK. I continued to follow the initial storm to the north and east towards Asher, OK which took me out of position for the second storm that produced the tornadoes near Byars. This embedded supercell was rather HP and displayed some nice structure in the late evening, though I missed the tornadoes due to my proximity from the storm and its HP nature. I broke off the chase after dark and enjoyed an impressive lightning show on the way back to Norman. Congrats to all who saw storms on Friday!

http://i55.tinypic.com/r8c75i.jpg
Picture of the second storm that produced tornadoes near Byars, OK. This picture was taken at 8:01pm CDT from 5 miles ENE of Byars and is looking WSW.

 

[John Farley]

My full chase report from central and eastern Missouri is now available at:

http://www.johnefarley.com/chase42211-full.htm

 

[Kevin Crawmer]

Great write up John. I too saw the suspicious lowering on the back side of that storm. It was several miles northwest of where I was seeing the rotation on radar...although I was obscured some by the donut hole since I hadn't switched to the TDWR site yet. To stay on track here, I left work about 6:20 from O'Fallon, MO and headed west on I-70. I got south of Warrenton in time to sit under the meso and get some good hail. The meso looked very impressive at this point, but there were no good east options out of town. I shot up into town and grabbed some hail pics and quickly got on I-70. Traffic was really bad, so I shot south at Foristel and then east on Hwy N. I just missed the tornado at New Melle as the reports were coming over as I was coming up on town. By the time I got to 40/61 I thought I had been left in the dust. I then saw a very suspicious feature that I at first discounted as grungy crud since it didn't appear to be associated with the parent storm (it had already crossed at Dardenne). As I got a closer view there was some slow rotation with this as you can see in the photos below. I liked the take on this in John Farley's blog above. I have really been struggling to try to make sense of this feature. My only other suspicion is that it might have been a separate updraft to another storm as things were really lining out at this point. Photos below of the feature and some hail grabs from Warrenton (biggest measured 2.50").

 

[Adam Lucio]

Was on the storm that produced the St Louis tornadoes. Not sure if I want to count the tornado since I never actually saw it other than powerflashes and debris falling from the sky. It was a very intense chase that started out simple enough. Caught some large hail early on in the storms life as we pursued it on tricky MO backroads.

Full log with radar/video: http://www.chicagoillinoisstormchaser.com/042211-St-Loius-Airport-Tornado.php

 

[Dan Robinson]

Full chase report with images from the Jefferson City-St. Louis supercell:

http://stormhighway.com/april222011.shtml