2019-02-23 REPORTS: MS, TN, AR, AL

[Ethan Schisler]

I had this setup on my radar several days out and had been back and forth as to whether I wanted to chase or not. Well the night before I committed to chasing as I had one of my chase partners, Cory Marshall, with me to help with the travels down there. I was concerned about instability (ended up not being an issue) and some S shaped hodographs (may have played a role in the underwhelming nature of this event. Anyway, my target for this event was initially Tupelo, MS; but I decided last minute to fetch westward and target the Grenada, MS area and west where the terrain is exponentially better. I met up with Jesse Risley and Kholby Martin down there and we looked at data sitting at a Wendy's restaurant near Batesville, MS.

I noted the impressive environment setting up over the area and several thunderstorms indeed developed overhead and moved eastward. My first mistake was not traveling further east to keep up with these storms that were associated with the pre-frontal trough that eventually produced the Columbus tornado and the tornado north of Tupelo (ouch). I targeted storms near the delta region and a couple storms caught my eye. The first was southwest of Memphis and we tracked it into the city where I thought it would interact favorably with the warm front...however it did pretty much nothing. So I dropped southward toward another cell that was firing up Dumas, AR and moving NE. This cell crossed the river and was discrete in nature...game on. I was able to maintain pretty good position on this supercell for about an hour before I let it go north of the TN border due to major flooding I encountered with several vehicles that were stuck. I noted a large wall cloud and a short lived funnel early on in its life cycle. I am not sure whether this feature touched down, I could not tell because of the bad terrain. These were the only images I was able to salvage from this chase. Although I couldn't confirm anything officially, I sent my images to NWS Memphis for review. Overall while the setup was underwhelming, I had a great time getting out there and chasing and getting on a decent storm. I have regrets about not sticking with my original target....but I also don't want to see death and destruction either...so I'm fine with missing those tornadoes which seemed to be rather sloppy on radar. Around 6pm I called the chase and headed home, arriving in my driveway around 2:30AM....over 24 hours on the road. Here are the few images I was able to get:

Funnel cloud near Byhalia, MS


Funnel cloud by Byhalia, MS


Severe flooding in Southern Tennessee which ended my chase.

Unsure if any of those touched down due to the poor terrain....

I'm not really a fan of Dixie Alley chasing. Not many views to be had and its not often things cooperate to get tornadoes in the flood plain of the delta. So I think it will be a while before I attempt another chase down there. Bring on the plains setups.

 

[Chris Dickerson]

I picked up Dustin Knight in Kentucky and we targeted northern Mississippi due to it having the best chance for discrete cell production in the undisturbed air along the pre-frontal trough. On the way down we passed some significant flooding in Tennessee, near Savannah. The Tennessee River was well above it’s boundaries, and water stretched in all directions for miles. There were houses with water mid-way up the first floor, and I saw an RV park that was so deep, only the AC units on top of the RVs were visible above the water.

We saw some cells begin to initialize just south of us as we had briefly staged in Corynth, MS. We also considered the storm that was further south that would end up producing the Columbus tornado, but changed our mind as the cells in-between began to rapidly develop. We began south down Rt 45 and realized there was no way we could cross in front of the cells in time, so we turned around and took 72 SE to Burnsville. We wanted to try and approach from the south and pace the storm, so we dropped south on 365 and took 30 to try and circle back through Boonesville. Because it’s Dixie, and visibility is significantly compromised it was almost impossible to see the storm, and we were relying on radar and GPS to try and loop around with perfect timing.

As we came back north, now just south of the storm, we closed to within a mile and the wall cloud was monstrous. The cloud motion was amazing. When we had breaks in the trees, we could see debris being lifted above the trees, and the tornado on the ground. It exhibited a stovepipe structure with multiple vortices during its life cycle. There were power flashes that illuminated the side of the funnel and wall cloud a bright orange at times, as well.

As we crossed 72, now back on 365 and going north, we were able to close within about a quarter mile when the tornado crossed the road in front of us. We continued north, but were blocked by an massive pine tree that had been blown across the road. We took a side street, and tried to find an alternate route, but that too was blocked by downed power lines.

At that point, there was no way of catching up to the storm, so we circled back to 365 as local authorities cleared the tree. After catching or breath in Savannah, we noticed that a cell to our NW was developing near Henderson, TN and became severe warned, then tornado warned quickly after. As we drove north on 22, it was now after sunset and we were deep in the woods. This storm was the last trailing edge of the development and by this time had ceased producing lightning. We stopped at the junction of 22 and 100, just north of Milledgeville, TN but we couldn’t see a thing. As we waited for the cell to skirt just north of us, all warnings were dropped, so we headed home.

All in all, it was the best start to any storm chasing season I’ve ever had; February tornado, got it on my live stream, got coverage on TWC, and the intercept maneuver was very satisfying because Dixie can be such a challenge and it worked perfectly. Oddly enough, this is the first chase where I didn’t get a single picture. I was concentrating on driving; if you’ve ever chased Dixie, you know how challenging the roads can be. Dustin got a bunch of photos and his Twitter post was shared a bunch so you might have seen those.

Here is a clip from my live stream that played on TWC. It’s truncated because it was taken from Twitch and not from the master copy. Once I clip that down, I’ll post a longer version.

But if the first chase of the season is indicative of the rest of this year, especially after 2018, then I’m stoked for what lies ahead.