3/31/08 REPORTS: IA/IL/MO/OK/AR/TN/TX/LA

[Joel Wright]

Bust. Don't really even know why I'm posting this, but I figured it'd be a good example of the crap we get to deal with up north.

Had to work till about 2, so was kind of late to the game anyway. Rushed home and took a quick look at things. It was pretty obvious what was happening. The deep moisture was being choked off by the dreaded northeast/southwest oriented wall of convection well to the south. This was like a giant sponge soaking up the moisture feed to the north.

Storms were trying to form in southern Iowa, and far northern Missouri. They didn't look too bad. Out ahead of them in southeastern Iowa clouds had broken just a bit, and SBCAPE neared 1000j/kg. I figured what the hell and headed out. Met Jeremy Ludin at his house in Port Byron and raced west along I-80.

Stopped for some wi-fi at a rest area, but were unable to find a connection. Scooted on down the interstate and found a motel in West Branch with decent connection. After looking at data there, it was pretty obvious that this thing was busting hard up north of the deep convection to our south. Briefly considered chasing one lone severe warned cell southwest of Cedar Rapids, but it looked like it was on it's way out and it was already past 6pm. So we ate some food and headed back east.

Overall a very disppointing day. Never was all the excited about the setup up north. But with most of the model runs the previous few days forecasting dews into the 60s, great shear, marginal instability, and the placement of a deepening surface cyclone just to the west...Well, we thought there might be at least something good to go after.

I hope you guys down south did better than us!

 

[Shane Adams]

Chad, Mick, and myself targeted the Red River area today. We left Norman for an original target of Ardmore, then quickly decided to move south to Gainesville. As we drove, a string of supercells developed between Sanger and south of DFW, so we positioned ourselves east and then south, just in time to meet up with the tornado-warned cell in Frisco. We somehow found a decent spot amidst DFW area rush hour suburbia and were able to observe excellent rotation/rising motion from less than a mile away. The rotation tightened into a long snake funnel that reached towards the ground briefly, but only got about halfway before rapidly dissipating. The next few minutes saw more awesome scud tags rising into the UB and cascading, rotary motions, but the show was over after about ten minutes. Another one of those "thought we had a tornado for about two minutes" type of situations, which are becoming par for the course in 2008 for our motley crew. This storm rapidly vanished, and we turned our attention to the Bryan County, OK sup.

We flew north up US75 and came in behind the storm near Caddo on US70. We basically flanked it all the way to Hugo, where road options and the dismal appearance of the overall structure made us abandon this storm. We then shifted our attention back west, to yet another tornado-warned storm. We never saw any rotation or even RFB action to speak of, but we did sample the hail core near Darwin, OK (some might say appropriately enough), which consisted of at least golfball sized stones, which broke in Chad's new chase ride, with several moon craters on the hood and roof, and yet another cracked windshield. After all that excitement, it was a quick Atoka Mickey D's "loser dinner" and back home.

 

[Bill Tabor]

I chased, but not a lot to report. I thought of making a commitment to going up toward Ardmore, etc but after looking at data this morning it seems like Ft Worth seemed doable, along with Corsicana, and possibly even Stephenville and Waco based on forecast soundings (RUC and NAM). Still I goofed around rather than just boogeying up north and didn't leave until 2:30. My own fault, and already cells that I had expected had been forming while I was loading my vehicle. (Yep, the vehicle wasn't set up either cause I had been having repairs on it lately).

Anyway, I shot up north to Waco, and made good time. Stopped on the north side of town and tried to decide on the storm up toward Hillsboro and south of Ft Worth which was currently showing decent rotation, or going west to the newly strong cell which currently had a tornado warning on it out toward San Saba. I analyzed a bit, and posted some questions / thoughts on the NOW thread - no replies.

Decided to shoot west all the way to Gatesville, then caught a south road toward Copperas Cove. The storm seemed to be strengthening for awhile and rotation improved on SRM. It was a close call timing wise making it to Copperas Cove. It appeared according to Mobile Threatnet and other SRM radar that I would arrive there, or almost there about the same time as the now indicated TVS would. I might mention there were not many roads around here because Ft Hood was nearby to my east and also some lakes around. So basically I didn't have much of an option if there was a problem. I just decided to punch the core and take my chances. The rain turned into a torrential downpour after a while with drops that were 2 or 3 inches at least. I thought I was about to get hammered by big hail, and wondered...perhaps I should have turned around. Anyway, I broke out. I came into the clear. Off to the west I could see a rain foot in the downdraft area next to the inflow area, and there was a large rainfree base extending to the west. There were a few very slight lowerings, and appeared a weak funnel shape for awhile with only weak motion (not really rotation). Then the thing just started dissipating! Basically it just evaporated in the next 20 minutes or so. I believe the cell to it's south blocked the inflow and got absorbed and my storm didn't like that. It briefly reformed another small storm / shower behind it's wake that started to grow and then it died out too. Looking at mesoanalysis I couldn't quite make out why but did see some cinh over the area. Also the cells had moved east of an axis favoring Craven Sig Severe, supercell, and torns. I'm thinking perhaps also the sfc low moved further north east and the mid level lows forcing must have gone too far north at that point. I'll welcome any suggestions.

Ran into a local chaser dude named Eric Dooley from Pflugerville. He was nice enough. He was unaware of Stormtrack so I told him about it, so he could get a bit more plugged into the community.

It was an ok chase. Partly I got what I asked for and that was a local chase. Had I left when I intended I would have seen the Ft Worth or Dallas cells. Still, it was a bit of a thrill trying to race the Tvs to Copperas Cove in the intense precip core.

 

[Chris C Sanner]

I chased 3 different storms today with zero luck on the tornado count. I narrowly missed the tornado near Little City, which I still have no clue where it is at exactly (not on any of my maps and it wasn't on google maps). Anywho, started the day chasing the Loco-Sulphur Supercell that had a decent base and some good motion at times.

After following it to Atoka, I decided to drop that one for the rapidly intensifying cell to my SW (one that produced the Little City Tornado). Unfortunately, I kept telling myself to drop south well before I did, the first of which would have led me to being in position to see the LC Tornado. Anywho, punched south on 75 with what looked like Mikey Gribble in his black Xterra with Kansas plates.

Saw the meso with good motion near Durant/Caddo area and then got some impressive structure paralleling the storm to nearly Hugo on US 70, again with (presumably) Mikey behind and then in front of me. Decided to call it a day there, but had the cell near Atoka that was T-Warned. Nothing was particulary interesting about the storm and I sampled the core as well and then I guess I copied Shane and the gang and ate at Mickey D's in Atoka before heading back to Normantown. That's 2/2 days with good tornadic storms but no tornadoes in the early going of 2008....

EDIT: Got some pics online

Storm on 70 E of Durant

Meso Near Caddo Area

Funnel? Near Caddo, had moderate rotation

 

[cdcollura]

Good day all,

Decided to chase today, given the fact that I am finished with a 3-month long Chicago contract and a little "diversion" driving back to Florida won't hurt much. My initial target was Springfield, MO.

Left Chicago at 9 AM, went south and southwest on I-55 through St Louis by 1 PM and reached Springfield, MO by 4 PM. This is where the severe storms were encountered, barely missing the TOR warned storm north and east of Springfield.

Some wind damage was noted on I-44 near Mile Marker 120.

I continued pushing south and west, taking highway 65 south to Conway, AR to I-40, anticipating any "tail end" of the squall line, but any "tail end" cell was in far S OK and little in the way of tornadic activity was observed.

Wrapped up the chase in Memphis TN for the night. Not much to report on except that wind gusts near 65-MPH and dime sized hail was encountered in some of the intense cells in the squall line.

Above: Interesting "bands" in the sky from the low-level jet (SW Missouri).

Above: What was left of the intense storm near Springfield, MO (Occluded / Gust front?)

Above: Flat tire experienced along Highway 65 north of Conway ... I love these chasing "moments" ;-)

 

[Simon Brewer]

(Simon Brewer, Cory Rundquist, and Shawn Maroney) Documented a nice cell near Sulfur, OK; tried to get in front of it, but we were slowed in downtown Sulfur and the meso/primary updraft crossed to our south of town. We got pounded by nickel to racket ball-sized hail as the core passed over us. Road network was horrible to the east and the environment just north of the Red River looked prime, so we opted to move south towards Madill, OK and catch any storm that fired in that region. Therefore, we watched a nice supercell form west of Madill, OK and followed it east and let it go somewhere north of Hugo, OK on SR 147. We documented multiple 3+ inch hailstones east of Madill on SR 199 (one hailstone was measured at ~3.25 inches in diameter). Will put some pics up sometime in the next couple of days. We were on the storm like glue and were in the close vicinity of Little City where the "tornado report" occurred, but never saw a tornado; I admit I was very interested in the hail around this area and could have possibly missed a brief tornado, so I'm interested to see any pics of this tornado.

Simon

 

[Brian Emfinger]

Chase Report - HERE

I got out early to Sallisaw in Eastern OK as I was hoping that there might be a few storms develop out ahead of the storms in central OK. A few showers did develop in SE OK but nothing like the RUC was showing. A little after 11am I headed further west down I-40 to Checotah where I headed NW to intercept a severe storm NW of there. The storm was linear but it tried a few times on its southwestern flank as it continually was redeveloping there. I stayed with the storm until about 2pm when I headed back SE into the cleaner air. As I got out of the storm I noticed a pretty strong TVS on GrLevel just behind me so I pulled over and saw nothing but more shelf cloud. I did notice to my east some pretty serious rotation. Well ok, it wasn't real rotation but it was still fun to watch. It was basically a wind shear line formed as the colder rain cooled air from the NW was bulging SE up against the SW winds that maybe were a bit enhanced from inflow into the storm. I got video of that on my report page on my website (I did not put on youtube as it wasnt anything good). I headed south and then west to intercept a storm that was just to my SW. Once inside there I had trouble with my internet and so I turned on my radio just in time to hear that a tornado warning had been issued for the storm. The radio guy actually said a multi-vortex tornado was reported crossing I-40 near Henryetta! I was in Grayson which was just a few miles NE of there so I called Karen Politte and the tv station I chase for and they both said the same thing which was there was no reports of a tornado but a tornado warning had been issued but that the storm was becoming part of the line so I headed east hoping the phantom multi-vortex tornado would spare me. The radio guy was out of Fort Smith station KISR and I guess must have been making up stuff. After a few tense minutes I was out of the heavy rain and hail (nickel) and heading south. I got to Eufaula then headed east and then south to Quinton to intercept that McAlester storm but it lined out too and I stayed out in front of the storm all the way to about Spiro, OK. I stopped for a few minutes at Bokoshe and got some close lightning.

 

[Bob Hartig]

But with most of the model runs the previous few days forecasting dews into the 60s, great shear, marginal instability, and the placement of a deepening surface cyclone just to the west...Well, we thought there might be at least something good to go after.

I know that story. Oklahoma was the hot spot, but way too far a drive from Grand Rapids. Action along the WF seemed worth checking out, though, with big SRH coupled with enough other ingredients being the draw. Tom Oosterbaan and I targeted Galesburg, IL, where cloud cover appeared to be thinning out. Not much else to say other than, we took our chances and busted. Ah, well. It was at least good to get out on the road again.

 

[Brandon Goforth]

We were on the storm like glue and were in the close vicinity of Little City where the "tornado report" occurred, but never saw a tornado; I admit I was very interested in the hail around this area and could have possibly missed a brief tornado, so I'm interested to see any pics of this tornado.

Simon

I would also like to see a pic of this supposed tornado. I started the day off in Davis, OK and observed a couple of cells developing quite rapidly SE of Duncan. I dropped south and watched the cell that moved through Sulphur as it passed over the Turner Falls area. It was looking decent for a brief moment, but I went south to Marietta as some new cells were developing. I jumped on the Marietta cell and stayed with it for the rest of the day, I was very near the meso when it went tornado warned just south of Madill. Unfortunately the roads sucked so I had to drop 3 miles south to I-70 and blast east. From what I could tell given the position of the storm, the apparent Little City tornado report came as the storm was moving over the extreme northern tip of Lake Texoma, due north of the Roosevelt Bridge crossing the lake. I had a pretty decent view of it at this time, although I did lose site of it very briefly a couple of times, but I never saw a funnel come anywhere near the ground. It had a very nice wall cloud with some rapid rotation at times, I don't know, maybe there was a brief spin up on the ground...I never saw it. I stayed on the south side of it and chased this storm to just NE of Hugo where it produced a string of tornado warnings, but I never saw a tornado, in fact, other than the time it was passing across the north side of Lake Texoma, it never even really appeared to come close to producing a tornado, and the rotation east of Durant toward Hugo was very weak. I'll tell you guys, I hate chasing east of I-35. The roads are a mess, and this particular storm was difficult to keep up with at times.

 

[Tony Cook]

Sulphur, OK hailstorm; SE Oklahoma supercells

Departed Austin: 8:15 a.m., with an initial, fuzzy target of Ardmore, OK. Got all the way to Davis, OK in Murray County. A severe cell was approaching from the SW, but terrain was poor, and I could not see the business end of the cell. GR3 was showing small hail with the storm. I headed east on 7, observing a rain-free base to my south, which was blocked intermittently by the rapidly advancing core. Hail core increased in size and intensity on GR3 just west of Sulphur. I was still seeing that area of interest just to the south of the core, and thought I could race down 177, beat the hail core, and be in good position to observe the updraft area. Wrong.

Took a golfball beating for about 90 seconds, until I found a house with a carport. Pulled in there until the core passed. At this time, my Alltel data feed quit rather abruptly. I am not sure if it was a problem with Alltel, or with my software, but I did not have data for the remainder of the day. Two times this year, I have lost my Alltel connection at critical points in a chase. I will post details in another thread about that. Anyway, foolishly tried to get my data connection back for a few minutes while the storm raced NE.

​

I decided to let it go and head South, where new towers were evident in the distance. Caught the severe-warned cell near Madill in Marshall county. I was approaching from the NW on this one, and followed it east. I went through Little City on 199, but never saw a tornado or damage there. Little City is about 1.5 miles North of Cumberland in Marshall County. I did see a very narrow swath of fresh tree damage on a gravel road NE of Bokchito, which is about 30E of Little City. Still need to review my video, but from my vantage point WNW of the base, any tornado may have been obscured by rain curtains. Base did exhibit broad rotation and frequent, intermittent lowerings.

​

Got back down to 70 and finally a little south of the storm so I had a better view. Numerous lowerings spun up intermittently, but no persistent wall cloud/funnels from my perspective (now WSW of the cell). Followed it east to Hwy 93 in Choctaw county. New cells were firing to the west of this one, and it started to die. Circled back to the west and caught a nice wall cloud just south of Antlers/Kent on Hwy 271. Sun was setting by this time, and multiple cell interactions were underway. Met fellow ST'er Mike Scantlin, who graciously let me watch his radar feed. We observed as the cells merged into an E-W oriented line, and I turned South and headed home.

​

Big thanks to Shane Hale, who provided valuable nowcasting for the last couple of hours of the chase. It was definitely my most exciting chase of the year thus far. Unfortunately, camcorder is malfunctioning again, so I can't post vidcaps yet. It may also sink my Thursday chase hopes. Anyone in Central TX have a video camera they want to lend me for a couple of weeks? :>​

845 miles

18 hours​

TonyC​

 

[Randy Denzer]

Central Texas Chase

2008 tornado count= ZERO!

I was ready to hit the road at 3 and watched the cell going up west of Hillsborough. I got hungout waiting for a delivery and was going crazy watching the Hillsborough cell start to show shear. I sat in the truck till 4:30, watching the action and waiting for this dumby to come by. Finally, at 4:30 the guy showed and I pulled out of Austin. Thank God I had to waite because it put me in line with the Lampasas cell that was now looking better and only 30 miles ahead. I shot up 183 and watched the cell eat the one to is northeast and start to show rotation. As I pulled into Lampasis, I was able to get to a nice hill overlooking Lampasis and shot an incredible wall cloud with a lowering and then it just dissappeared ... Right before my eyes this cell went high based and dissappeared before it got to Copperas Cove. It was great to see such a nice wall cloud!! If you ever get into Lampasis the best food in central Texas is in a hole in the wall called "The Filling Station" Try it out...

 

[fplowman]

Expecting around a 3pm initiation and leaving KC around 10:30 - 11:00 I didnt think I could make it south of OKC in time so I shot south down through Tulsa, reasoning that Ill be north east - east of all the storms firing.

I chased a few cells that initiated around Ardmore, Ok out ahead of them as they came to me.

First time chasing in SE OK. Probably wont willingly be back. Bad road network .

My chase sounds similiar to Shane and Mickey, Chad and the gang. Didnt see nothing really. One storm the last of the day seemed to have a lowering with some rotation on it but didnt get going.

In retrospect I should have stuck in Okmulgee, quite the impressive flash flood there that had the through way locked down due to vehicles being washed out. We had to detour to get through town and it had lots of great photographic and video potential of which some we got.

Also experienced some good quarter size hail on the storms. This gave some excitement to the rest of the gang and the film documentary guy accompanying me.

Otherwise un-eventful. Made it back to KC around 3 am.. That soft fancy bed and the Egyptian cotton sheets were great and made for a quick departure to dreamland. That was definitely the highlight of the last few hours of my chase.

 

[Rocky Rascovich]

Mark McGowen and I were also on the storm along Hwy 199 west of Durant.. infact we were just west of Little City where the meso just about went right over us. We saw no legitimate tornado unless it happened in about a 90 second time frame when we were going through low lying tree covered area's, and with my luck, that may have happened. I did see a very brief funnel cloud but I seriously doubt that it made ground contact.

At one time, I was quite certain this was going to produce as I went back east away from Little City and heading in the direction of Durant. But... my one concern was a lack of good surface inflow anytime during the duration of my intercept with this particular cell.

I am surprised that we did'nt have at least a few confirmed tornado reports with this.. shear was more than adequate, cape was fairly robust especially for this time of year.. I'm wondering if the veered winds at the surface may have reduced the low level shear just enough to keep any substantial tornadoes from occurring.

A total of 520mi. on this day in the Honda Civic. Over 900mi. total with Sunday's chase included.

 

[Mikey Gribble]

Ryan Shirk and I targeted Pauls Valley, Oklahoma. I wanted to target Ardmore, but I knew a storm going up in the Ardmore area would track right into the crap chase terrain in southeast Oklahoma so we attempted to cheat a hair North in hopes of better terrain for chasing. Well we couldn't resist when a storm went up by Ardmore since we knew that was the most favorable area for tornadic supercells so we went for it. We got on the storm right as it went tornado warned. I think we were North of Durant. We were about 10 miles ahead of the storm and watched it as it moved in. I saw today that there was a tornado reported from it, but we never saw anything.
The updraft base looked half way decent when we first got on it, but it wasn't that impressive. The storm stayed tornado warned the whole time we were on it, but it never did come close to producing IMO. At one point it had a scary looking lowering, but there wasn't hardly any rotation in the wall cloud. Below is a picture. I think this was when we were still North of Durant.


Anyways, it started to become apparent that the storm just wasn't going to get it done, so at about 6:30 or so we called it a day and headed home. We were by Hugo at the time. The first chase of the season was a grade A kick in the junk. I swear I am never going to chase another veering 850mb wind day again. I wasn't too happy about the road networks and terrain in SE Oklahoma either. I feel pretty good about our forecast. IMO we were on the best storm in the state, but it just wasn't meant to be. I should have known better.
BTW Chris, that was me down there. Ryan Shirk was driving my car though. I was riding shotgun all day. If you happened to drive by while we were peeing in the ditch, Ryan was the guy that's hung like a buck gerbil.

 

[Jay Press]

This is Brian Press again signed in under my brothers account. For some reason I have not been able to post for some time now. Mod's, if you get a chance can you please check my account.. Thanks!!!!

Well, since my brother missed his early morning flight from L.A. but he got a later flight to OKC which landed just as that mother of a supercell went just north of the airport around 11:45pm (3/30). I thought there was no way they were gona land in that storm, but then I released Will Rodgers is south of the city.. Anyway, picked him up around 12:45am (3/31) and decided to stick with the storm that I had been playing with since 5pm the previous day.. See my post in 3/30 Post-Storm.. We ended up in stillwater around 2:30am when a tor warning went off near us.. I think we heard sirens in the city there was a major wind shift and you could see the low clouds swirling around.. It was dark and it was intense, dumping rain and quarter sized hail, the rain was coming down so hard it was amazing. I'm not saying it was a tornado, but it sure was intense, and dark, and being that I am not the most experienced chaser in world, I was a bit nervous, but Steve Levine (my chase guru ) taught me about how the wind shifts as the meso moves past you. Well, I still wasn't to sure, but I realized the meso must have past to our north, because the winds switched quickly from the s to the west.. Am I correct in that theory? It was crazy... Saw some super close CG's and witnessed some of the loudest thunders I have ever heard.. It was rocken for hours..

Got up at 9am and treked down to Ardmore. We got distracted with a cell that fired early and played with that, got tempted to go south towards Dallas then the new supercell got going and that was our storm. We followed it east near Madill and just missed the Tornado but a few minutes. There was a telephone pole down with all kids of emergency crews showing up and a few people were running around a little frantic.. We didn't take any pictures but it sure looked like something came through there. We finally caught up to the storm and got some cool shots. This thing was moving so fast. The roads (and trees) were terrible but were able to have a few minutes with the cell.

It had a ton of lowerings with a few areas of light rotation but nothing ever got going. Did see a few funnels too. Nice looking structure on this puppy! I think these pics were take near Bokchito.

We were hearing reports of baseball hail and there was another tornado warning and sure enough we stayed clear of the hail but we saw these on the side of the road.. I would say Tennis Ball to Baseball.

We followed the storm along the 70 into the forest and hills all the way to Vallient. From there we got back on to the 3 going NW and saw 5 or 6 large trees down covering almost the entire highway. Can any one confirm there was a tornado there? There was leaves and stuff all over the road a few hundred feet from the downed trees. Didn't see much else but a bunch of lowering and some good bolts and a good sunset.

Back here in L.A. now hoping for some Thunderstorm here tomorrow. Tomorrow looks to be a good setup for waterspouts..

until next time,

b.p.