After a frustrating day yesterday in OK I hit pay dirt in eastern AR today, seeing probably four tornadoes and finally broke my 2011 pattern of seeing supercells but not tornadoes.
The first tornado was a brief one around 4:50 about 5 miles SSE of Augusta:
It doesn't show up in this picture, but there was a dust swirl underneath this nub funnel. In fact, I saw the dust swirl first as it spun up perhaps a quarter to half mile to my northeast along route 33. This tornado lasted about 2 minutes.
I couldn't keep up with this storm so I blasted east then south to intercept the next storm down the line, finally catching up just northwest of Greasy Center or about 6 miles north of Hughes.
The second tornado, which I saw at that location, was a nicely backlit rope tornado, or more accurately series of ropes and funnels under a strongly rotating wall cloud, with thin curtains of rain wrapping around the tornado. It lasted 4 or 5 minutes but not sure if it was down that whole time or intermittently on the ground, as new vortices kept forming. My video of this is some of my all-time favorite video and I will post as time for editing permits once I get home. This may be the same tornado Scott saw. Here is a picture:
I am almost sure that this was not the only tornado that occurred here, though. The tornado above occurred under a new wall cloud as the storm cycled. To the southwest, however, was another, more rain-wrapped meso, which had a large wall cloud with pendant funnels. As this feature got closer (and on a slightly more southerly track), I bailed south, but as I did I noticed a big cloud of dust just to my west. That will get your pedal to the metal, and it did! Once I had blasted south enough to get out of the way, I turned back toward the meso and saw this:
I think that at least some of the dust was either from an inflow jet or RFD, but with that much dust that close to a large funnel more than halfway to the ground, I think it is very likely that there was some degree of circulation on the ground, so I am calling this a likely tornado also. It may actually have been on the ground longer than the one above, as my view of this one early on was not as good due to the wrapping rain. However, it is at least possible that with this picture, I had two tornadoes at once:
Note the funnel just left of center in the foreground and the rain-wrapped lowering to its left in the background. Not whether one, neither, or both were on the ground at this time, but it was cool getting both in the picture.
Finally, after I was through chasing and just heading east on I-40 to pick up I-55 to head back toward St. Louis, I saw what I first thought was steam from a smokestack somewhere in the Memphis or West Memphis area. Then I saw a power flash under it, and realized that it was in fact attached to the storm. Absent the power flash and the damage reports from West Memphis, I would never have thought this was a tornado, but I think it probably was - I imagine the NWS will do a damage survey in West Memphis, so we should know for sure in a day or two. Here is a video capture from just after the power flash:
Got the kind of storms today I was expecting yesterday - discrete, classic supercells - which made for a much more enjoyable chase, even though they were still moving fast enough (45-55 mph) that you had to plan your intercepts carefully.
Oh well, there will be more. These snapshots I took while I was videoing were the only thing I had saved. Chase cam froze up and I didn't get anything off of it either. bittersweet day.
