2014-04-03 REPORTS: MO/IL/AR/TX/KY

[Dan Robinson]

Thursday was nearly a 23 hour-long chase day for me. I witnessed power flashes from the tornadic storm moving through the core of St. Louis before sunrise. My original plan was to shoot video of the storms in the city in the morning, then head west on I-70 for the main event on the warm front. I ended up deciding not to chase western/central Missouri after seeing it was hosed by too many storms too early. There were several interesting and photogenic features around the STL metro during this event, including dramatic arcus/shelf clouds, an instance of well-defined undulatus and of course lightning. Tornado sirens went off downtown twice, once before sunrise and again right after sunset with two tornado-warned storms. I posted a full account with photos and video at my blog:

http://stormhighway.com/blog2014/april514a.php

 

[John goelz]

Nice Blog entry. I slept through the morning event as I hadn't given it much thought at all. Woke up shocked to hear about the U-city tornado and took a look at radar trends. Just didn't feel right and I too scrapped my plans to head out to the Columbia/Sedalia area. Gave a severe storm a quick chase around noon with plans to intercept the hail core around smithton, il which offers plenty of shelter to observe hail, but the hail core fell apart as it approached. Then re-evaluated the day and kept true to my decision to stay home. Headed back out around 8 and set up on the bluff on 15 in Alorton, IL and watched the Tor warned storm roll in with a dramatic shelf illuminated by lightning. Then proceded down 255 to mousette lane to look for signs of rotation. Saw a suspicious feature to the north/northwest which had a wall type appearance, but couldn't be sure in the darkness so I decided to let it go and headed home. i'm sure you were watching the same feature. What could have been a bust day turned out to be pretty cool because I stayed very close to home and still got to see some storms.

 

[Austin Jones]

We left Columbia Mo in the afternoon and headed south on 63 watching a line of storms on radar has they headed east from the mo/ks border. One storm appeared to be somewhat dominant and we headed south west on 54 to intercept it on the east side Lake of the Ozarks. As we approached the storm it gained a tornado warning. The chase country was as bad as it gets, with hills, trees, and flooded roads, after struggling to find a good position we finally found a highway running SE in front of the storm that allowed us to shoot out in front of it and from a bridge near the town of Tuscumbia we were finally able to see the sky and get one decent picture of the gust front approaching.[/ATTACH][View attachment 8324

 

[Joe Pudlik]

Ended up on several storms in W-C. Missouri. Had some decent structure with a few, along with some hail.

http://www.turbulentstorm.com/1/post/2014/04/april-3rd-2014-w-c-missouri-chase.html

 

[Skip Talbot]

Brindley and I caught a very dramatic tornado warned QLCS over Osage Beach, MO. There was a cylindrical shaped lowering in a kink in the gust front associated with an embedded couplet that tracked just to our north. Sirens wailing, traffic darting for cover, it had the same rush as some of our tornado intercepts and reminded us of our Henryville, IN tornado chase in 2012. The tornado forecast was largely a bust, but we still had an amazing chase.

Detailed write-up, pictures, video, and annotated map: http://www.skip.cc/chase/140403/

Watch video >

 

[Mark McGowen]

Followed Simon Brewer and Juston Drake from Joplin, MO, that afternoon to NE Texas. Initially got distracted by the Choteau, OK, storm and a bad hailstorm near Wagoner and made it to Greenville, TX, in time to witness the nighttime tornado near town. Frequent lightning made it hard to videotape the tornado, but I was able to salvage some video stills. The times of the video stills are at 8:14, 8:17, and 8:37 p.m. in that order.