2016-02-23 REPORTS: LA, MS, AL, FL

[Marcus Diaz]

I decided to gamble with my second Dixie Alley chase ever and second chase of 2016. This setup looked much more impressive than my last time down here (February 2). Time wasn't really on my side, though. I chased with Max Olson and Tony Mesias from Denver. They flew into DFW at 11pm Monday night. Due to the distance of the setup, we had to drive east for about 3 hours, get 3 hours of sleep in a hotel, then wake up super early and continue east through a steady, constant rain for about 4 more hours. Our target for the day was Baton Rouge to start, and likely end up Gulfport as the day progressed. We were on I-10 in Louisiana when the very first storms were popping up south of New Orleans. The first storm went tornado warned, then the one west of it. We also had a storm on radar south of Baton Rouge, slowly progressing NE. I half jokingly said that storm would go tor warned soon. Sure enough, just as we crossed the Mississippi River, it went tornado warned. We were not that far from it, so we made the decision to go ahead and make an intercept. After dealing with some slow traffic, we were heading south on I-10 near Prairieville when we finally punched through the core and under the base. According to radar, the circulation had passed to the east of the interstate, but we soon realized the circulation was coming at us from the west. We stopped and let the brief spinup pass about 50-100 yards in front of us. Cars were stopped on the interstate as it did. It's a miracle the tornado didn't gain strength and toss cars. We called the tornado in, which was the first confirmation for that tornado. It went on to do some significant damage in Prairieville and Livingston. We then played pinball along I-12/10 the rest of the day, between tornado warnings that were HP. We called it a day around 7, and headed to Baton Rouge for some seafood. Overall, a good day. My expectations were a little high for this day, but at least we come home with something.

Total miles: 1,938 miles
Time driven: 32:22:38