3/15/08 Reports: GA

[Matthew Crowther]

Did an impromptu chase of the cell that began due west of downtown. I only brought my still camera- headed west on I-20, then dropped south on I-285, then jogged west. The storm was hard to see due to lots of rain and the numerous trees and hills. Did see the meso, but no tornadoes. Some golf ball hail fell on my car before I bailed, then I saw more large hail on the side of the road later. Took a few pics of a distant storm to the NE then headed home. Ran into more hail on the way.

Some pics here:

http://web.mac.com/mcrowther3/iWeb/Site/3-...hase%20ATL.html

 

[SteveCarter]

WOW..What a day! From Commerce to Elberton,Ga..there FIVE tornado-warned cells within 2 hours. Couldn't keep up...at all. Saw a church damaged by one tube on Hwy 17 outside of Royston, GA, and the police had closed the road, then ran into quarter-sized hail just north of Elberton. My sister was stuck in the Tanger Outlets stores in Commerce THREE times because of warnings, with the sirens blaring away. All in all a VERY exciting day, but no visuals. Like normal, these storms were FLYING, but the rotation in them was spectacular...to say the least. These were practically in my back yard today, so......what more can you ask for?

 

[Tyler Yarnell]

Finally got my pictures uploaded, hope they work...we initially were on the storm that went through Fairfield County, SC, but the TVS disappeared as it passed our location, got some dime size hail and that was it. As this was going on we checked the cell over bamberg and decided to make a run at it, was able to get ahead of the storm 5-7 miles NW of St. matthews, sc. Terrain was a huge problem as we were stuck with dense trees and high hills. Finally were able to get in a perfect spot near a farm and directly to our three o'clock a huge wall cloud rotation.

I have video that is about 52 seconds long of the cloud, but can't figure out how to upload it.

Eventually we got in the hail core and had to back out about 200-400 yards away from the rotation. The roads continued to get dicey, so we crossed US-21 to SC-35, got stuck in the hail core and eventually got stuck behind the storm and unable to continue the chase due to the speed of the storm, the roads, and the downed trees.

Here I am as we're leaving the storm, wall cloud was to the right.

Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqg9mUC9EXA

 

[Gerard Jebaily]

Left my hometown of Florence about 4:00 pm and intercepted 2 nice cells today. The first was tornado warned just as I was leaving Florence for the Camden area, I caught up with it North East of Bishopville, SC. The cell had a perfect base, wall cloud, and the best shade of green ive ever seen in a storm. The entire storm as well as the precipitation was all a magnificent shade of green that I hope can be seen on the video. The storm remained tornado warned but became clustered with further development down south and I lost it when traveling into Hartsville, SC.

I abandoned the first cell and decided to intercept the much larger and more descrete cell that was coming through the Lugoff, SC area. I calculated that I could intercept it just south of Bishopville. I got in position in the knick of time just as the storm went Tor warned right then. As the storm approched from the west I tried to make a jog south to take the only east road nearby to stay ahead of the storm. The core overtook me as I moved south. The preciptiation (which included quarter size hail) broke and suprised me with a very quick moving and rapidly rotating wall cloud moving right up the road directly at me. I stopped the vehicle and had no way to turn around at the time due to heavy traffic on the 2 lane road and I was swallowed unwillingly right through it. Luckily there was no tornado on the ground at the time or I would have been in serious trouble. The hook overtook me and I eventually found my east road but was never able to drive fast enough to break through to the other side for a second visual on the wall could.

I follwed this Tor warned storm back on I-20 where I was never able to catch back up to it again. (EDIT: This storm later produced a tornado in my hometown. It caused 3 injuries including a 3 year old boy who is in critical condition when he was blown out of his window in his trailer and the trailer rolled over him.) The rest of the activity moved off to the south and east away from any good highway that didnt take me through the traffic of Florence, SC again. Other good activity was to far away to reach in time as well as intercept before dark.

I will try to capture any decent images off of the video and edit later.


Edit: Here are a couple pics and a video clip of the "Green" cell. Not as rich colored in the video as it was IRL. I tried to stitch the two pics together but I had issues.

http://www.scstormchaser.com/pictures/Greenage.wmv

 

[Andrew Khan]

I left my abode around 10:00 AM EDT, headed towards the general location of Georgia. I had the idea of Commerce, GA as a target location for the storms. I was not chasing alone however, I was accompanied by my chase partner Kurt Hulst. As we were 3/4th the way to commerce, I realized that the entire MCS that was pushing NEE, was the main activity for today. Inadvertently, it was not solely this MCS, behind and along the warm front, storms were developing, I discovered. Continually, it seemed eternal. More and more cells developed behind one another, which upon Baron Exhibited supercellular characteristics occasionally. On the cell we intercepted in commerce, racing at 69 mph, it had a meso-shear algorithm ring, which indicated shear of 160 MPH, which we both though to be excessively high, the highest we both had seen. We caught rotation in the mid-levels of the storm, and a bubbling pattern in the gust front, and off to the west there was a wall cloud. We then headed to Roiston, GA and intercepted a cell producing golf ball size hail denting Kurts' car. There was an evident wall cloud yet again, but this time, it quickly transitioned before our own eyes into an HP supercell. Following this, we left driving within the rain, only to end up chasing rainbows, which in itself was a thrill. Overall, the storms were moving extremely fast, too fast to chase, the trees and hills caused me a lot of anger on this chase, but it was a nice time I had.

 

[Doyle McIntosh]

Awesome but disappointing day in north Georgia. Some buddies and I had gone to Daytona Beach Florida for our spring break and were returning back to Indiana yesterday around the time things were firing up in Georgia. Unfortunately though only one other person with me was a storm chaser and meteorology student and the rest were more concerned about getting home rather than chasing a super cell through the north Georgia hills.Terrance Cook was on the phone now-casting for me and that added to my frustration because he had told me about just how close I came to bagging a nader. I did however catch the beginnings of a wall cloud as we drove north on I-75 about 20 miles north of Atlanta. From what I later learned only 15 minuets after I saw this storm it went on to produce a tornado. I wanted to cry last night when we finally got home and I check the SPC reports page and saw a string of red dots exactly where I had been.


wall cloud forming on the right (looking north on 75)

http://community.webshots.com/user/MDoyle128

 

[Kurt Hulst]

Well I hate it when I am almost done posting my report and I press something and the browser vanishes with all I type up. So whatever, heres my report adding briefly to what Andrew said.

The night before We decided to head to Commerce as our target. Well that panned out as we approached we encountered a HP supercell with quarter size hail. Rotation was very evident.

We let that pass as it was moving way to fast for us to keep up with.
WE waited in Commerce for the second supercell but decided to move closer north of Jefferson. We witnessed a few brief glimpses of a nice structured wall cloud but had to drop farther south towards Jefferson to get a better view. We found the airport and went a few mile farther south and found another opening and witness this HP structure.

We then had to continue to Jefferson as evade the hail core that had spurts of golf ball or larger hail. We then headed east to Nicholson. AS we cleared the hail core we witness tight rotation with strong differential motion but it was quickly enveloped by the hail core. Then we dropped down to Athens to evade the rest of the hail core and eventually made our way back up to Royston where we intercepted our third tornado warned supercell. This one was more classic, but was being over taken by downdraft outflow, but still gave us some nice structure. I think Royston was the most open area we were able to chase in most of the day except at the end of the day were we found another quadrant of open field where we witnessed our last super cell.

These are from Royston:

We then headed SE out of Royston and intercepted the last tornado warned supercell of the day for us. We witnessed a dying wall cloud and then it just collapsed and rained out on top of us. Fortunately behind this storm was sunshine offering a very close up rainbow. It, however, did not have a pot of gold at the end.

On the way back to TN, we witnessed another rainbow over the mountains of NC.

 

[cdcollura]

03-15-08: REPORTS: CA

Good day all,

Sorry for the late post, but a rather interesting setup unfolded over central California on Saturday, March 15, 2008.

A region of very cold air aloft (cold-cored setup) with H5 (500 MB) temps from -30 to -35 degrees prevailed with surface temperatures in the 60's and dewpoints in thre 50's. Cold core thunderstorms, some strong to severe, developed in this environment, especially with mountain enhancement / daytime heating.

Remember - This is California, so storms like this are unusual. The central valley is sometimes more suseptible to storms, however.

These pictures were taken while visiting friends out in the Bay area as the cold-core passed over.

Above: Funnel cloud near Concord, CA off I-680.

Above: Rather interesting storm structure east of Mount Diablo. Yes, that's a hail shaft to the left.

Above: Small-hail from one of the storms (pea sized).

Above: Mount Diablo and rainbow / small-hail storm.

See more details at the link below...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/mwcl2008.htm#MAR15

 

[Perry Williams]

Below is the link to photos I snapped as an intense supercell passed over my location in Douglasville, Georgia around 3:35-3:45 p.m. EDT Saturday. Hail larger than 2.50" in diameter pelted my home; I took shelter in an interior closet (tornado warning/ funnel cloud observed to my southwest).....it sounded like large rocks being hurled into my roof and walls. Accompanied by a loud roaring sound, I honestly wondered if it was just large hail or debris hitting my home from an approaching tornado (wind gust of 53 mph also occurred per my Vantage Pro anemometer). I recovered and photographed some of the largest hailstones after the storm passed (but another supercell dropped marble to nickel sized hail at my location 20-25 minutes later). The 2.50 to 2.75" inch diameter hail was the largest I've observed at my home or while spotting in Douglas county since March 31, 1973 (when I was eleven).

Here are photos I took of the approaching supercell, large hail which pelted my location, and a funnel cloud which thankfully never touched down. Also there's a link to video from meteorologist (and good friend) Mike Phelps....who along with his chase partner, was filming the same supercell from a vantage point (Chapel Hill road bridge over I-20) less than one mile south of my Douglasville home.

Link to my my supercell pics:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/southernwx/sets/72157604123993538/

Link to many damage pics I've taken of deadly EF3 Polk-Floyd-Bartow county tornado which occurred around 12:20-12:45 pm EDT Saturday (plan another survey tomorrow of hardest hit area of Polk/ Floyd county where several homes were leveled)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/southernwx/sets/72157604134905297/

Douglasville supercell video from my good friend Mike Phelps and his chase partner (only 0.7 miles south of my location where 2.50-2.75" inch diameter fell)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxhTY7o-4dM