Ethan Schisler
EF5
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.
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 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.