4/10/08 REPORTS: AR / MO / IA / IL / KY / TN / MS

[Mikel Shively]

Well I don't really have much more to add. I left Lancaster and was going to head to the Maysville area in MO. I got stopped short at I-35 near Jameson. I saw a developing storm SW of Bethany and wanted to get into position, so I drove to Bethany and waited. Tor warning went out on the storm, which I thought was a good sign. Saw a funnel cloud on SR A East of Ridgeway. Not to intense. Storm then started to weaken. Decided to head East to Unionville area. Encountered a couple of storms, both had hail and pretty good wind gusts, but no rotation. However the second storm in Putnam Co. which was SVR warned, was probably the most visually impressive of the day, however, given the other stuff I saw, thats not saying much.

 

[Brian Stertz]

Watched/chased a few higher based "15 center" mini supercells rocket through the KC Metro. Some barely contained severe hail (nickels and dimes) and no real interesting cloud base structures. Looked like today one had to be on the surface low or warm front to get anything of any importance. The stuff around KC was pretty junky. Had 50-60mph winds on the last batch of high based storms that signaled the end of this system.

 

[Olivier Staiger]

here in Geneva Switzerland i got some small hail and blitz, was streaming live vid and clips, still up for replay archives at

http://www.klipsi.ch/twistandshout.htm

good exercise for next month ...

on kyte click shows tab. on bambuser archive link

 

[Brent A. Clair]

I was in Operations Center at Adams County, so no first-hand encounters. However, a few to pass along. First off, Lima, Illinois got "hit" again with a tornado. At least it is looking that way. Reports from reputable spotters and damage reports indicate a very weak tornado passed through the south edge of town. In case the name sounds familiar, refer to May 10, 2003. But this time, only minimal damage (a line or two dislodged, a few sheds moved a little, a trampoline tossed (oh, yeah, that's a hurricane, people!). That same storm proceeded northeast to a little town of Sutter and slightly damaged a church. Nothing major, but the shingles were removed and a few windows taken out.
Storm Slams Church
Further northeast, a farm took a big hit, wiping out a few sheds and tearing up some livestock equipment.
Like A Train
That storm eventually continued over Hancock County and towards some of the fellow chasers in Western Illinois at the time.
Further back southwest, what seems more like straight-line winds went through Taylor, MO, just west of Quincy (UIN). Some photos, plus a view from another storm where Pritchard was at are included in this blog:
WGEM Weather Blog
Other than that, just some intense winds and rain, mainly around home. My crew of spotters from the Fire Dept. got a thrill of their lives at times, even through I think it was only 50-60 mph winds. To them, though, that's a hurricane. Guess I'll have to do another training for them!!

Synopsis:
For a day that was waning fast, with the cloud shield and Mod risk to the south, it definitely did not disappoint. The indices were too juiced to be inhibited by a little cloud cover. However, the few peeks of sun also helped things. This scenario has happened before; clouds after morning convection then big storms. This has made me adjust the forecasting a few years ago, and NOT dismiss any high indices that might make a storm go. But, I am far away from an ace at this, so this is not meant to be a "in your face" remark.

OK, enough rambling. Mods will probably remove this anyway. If so, tell me what not to say next time, and I will oblige.
Later
BAClair

 

[Mike Peregrine]

Sorry about posting in the wrong thread last night - thanks to whoever moved it. I was on the phone with my brother around 8:30 pm when the wind suddenly came up and the sirens go off. I hear a voice over his tv saying something like "if you live in the south part of St. Joe, take cover now!" and was like "why are you still upstairs talking to me on the phone?" His wife and little girl went to the cellar. The next thing, I get a call from him saying that a tornado has apparently gone through a nearby neighborhood - he could see a large house sitting in the middle of the street (turned out to be an apartment building that was lifted off its foundation: http://www.stjoenews.net/news/2008/apr/11/possible-tornado-hits-south-side/.)

About 8 blocks of damage on the south side of St. Joseph. On radar, the storm had mini supercell characteristics. Compact, very close to the low, in cool environment. I'm interested in seeing the breakdown on the near storm environment for this particular cell. My guess is a cold core storm with a brief tornado. I'm in DC on business right now (naturally), so other than hearing it on the phone, I missed it all. Should hear about verification at some point today -

 

[Danny Neal]

I met Adam Lucio in El Paso, IL just around 3 PM and we saw what would be the makings of those supercells in NE MO/S IA go up. We held out in El Paso a little longer hoping deep convection would fire up to the SW near STL and head up this way.....that was not to be. We finally made the decision to head for Galesburg via I 74 in hopes that the supercells in NE MO would hold together and make it that far. All day it had been this dreary, damp, and a windy overcast all across central IL. This wouldn't change. By the time we hit Peoria, tornado warnings were already evident over Adams County with a confirmed tornado near La Grange, MO. As we hit Galesburg around 615 PM the storm was coming into view to the SW. We dipped south on RT 67 all the way to Roseville. We went west on 116 until we were 3 miles to the N or Raritan. Storm motions were "said" to be N at 55 but it looked like the core was spreading to the E and we knew we had to get out of there. We started back east on 116 when Adam and I noticed a bowl shaped lowering rapidly approaching from the SW. Strong rotation and a possible tornado was reported with this storm and it was only a few miles away so we took no chances and headed back east to 67/116 jct. When we arrived at that intersection the storm looked real ragged and outflow-y so we decided to let it overtake us. As we were sitting there about to get cored I noticed the winds to be strong out of the southwest, in a matter of 30 seconds we experienced several strong blasts out of the east. Having lost data we could only assume the couplet was wrapped in rain and passed almost overhead (later analysis of GR3 confirmed this) We then gave up on the storm and headed north to Monmouth when Adam spun out into a ditch and I had to go back and help him while only a matter of miles to our north our outflow-y storm would produce a rope tornado, captured by Joel Wright and Jeremy Ludin.
Congrats to all who bagged one and to all that had successful chases, this was a good chase for me because my chase forecast/target ....... was right on having 10 tornadoes within a 50 mile radius of there.

Bowl shaped lowering moving North as we were moving east on 116

This was looking into the direction of the rope tornado

Probably not the way you want to end a chase....

http://youtube.com/watch?v=12UaukxgcoQ - rotation couplet passing overhead, also loss of data.

 

[Dick McGowan]

Darin Brunin, Jordan Wrecke and I intercepted and seem to vaporize some high-based, outflow-dominant, poop storms...not even worth typing about. Some fun downdrafts, a low-topped shelf cloud, some small hail and a perdy sunset.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

Started off the chase on Wednesday night leaving from Lansing around 6 pm and driving to Effingham, IL. Got to Effingham shortly after midnight and found a hotel for the night. Woke up on Thursday and found tornado watches out for a large part of Arkansas and Missouri. Headed south on I-57 to I-55 and south towards Memphis. Best cell of the day was forming Southwest of Wynne, AR so I got off the highway and headed west into Wynne. Saw some great inflow that almost blew me over, and some wall clouds and some very good rotation. Nothing ever produced for whatever reason. The storms raced away at 55+ mph and I tried to keep up on it because there was some rotation showing up and we had a very visible rotating wall cloud. Eventually I gave up the chase on that after it fell apart and headed south towards Forrest City, AR. Had another cell looking ok near Parkin, and headed towards that, but that fell apart as well. Stopped for gas, then headed across the Mississippi River into Memphis.

Once in Memphis, a couple cells crossed the river north of town that looked like they had potential. Shot up 51 and spent the rest of the day in Western TN chasing after some cells. Nothing ever produced, but gave some good video. We ended up running into some downed lines on 152 east of Spring Creek, TN. It was dark by that point, so we called off the chase and headed east on I-40 towards Nashville. Stopped at Jack in the Box in Nashville and ate since we hadn't eaten in about 12 hours, and then decided to drive straight through back to Michigan because of the Severe threat on Friday in Michigan. Arrived back in Michigan at about 8 am Eastern time on Friday morning.

Here's a few pictures of nothing significant.



There's also a video I put together up at http://www.severestudios.com/node/366

 

[Eric Flescher]

Fruitless search and storm pooping out over Olathe

I left teaching in Olathe at around 5:00. While there were possibility of more potential severe weather farther away, my immediate target was a meeting place (that I never found) around Nall Avenue in Overland Park. I heard the reports of severe thunderstorms over the line in some counties in Missouri and some severe thunderstorms were south near Paola. I headed North on I-35.

Frustrated at not finding this Country Club off of Tomhawk ( serves me right for using Mapquest and not using GoogleMaps or Yahoo Maps- no GPS yet sorry), I abandoned my search. Watched the skies and listening to the radio reports at the same time, I headed back to Olathe.

Several vehicles had crashed slightly into each other right ahead of me during the rain downpour. Near Olathe after 6:00, I could see a nice storm to the West, heading towards Olathe and I-35. Getting on to Sante Fe in Olathe (off of I-35), the promising cell pooped out and got quite ragged. I had my camera but I decided it was not worth taking a picture of.

A teacher the next morning said there was a report of small tornado near St. Joseph. I quickly looked up the SPC report and yup, he was right.
Then I found that news report of what happened
http://www.stjoenews.net/news/2008/apr/11/possible-tornado-hits-south-side/

 

[Joel Wright]

Finally got the video uploaded to Youtube courtesy of Jeremy.

Again this is west Of Galesburg IL shortly before 8pm. This is about a minute or two after we apparently drove right through the circulation of one of these vorticies. The video is taken from route 34 looking northwest as the action moves away to the north-northeast at over 50mph. Towards the end the rain really starts coming down so I ran to the truck for cover.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu99KyYtWpA


By the way I should point out that there's no sound because uploading the sound with the vid made the file size really large for some reason. Just this short file without sound is big in itself.

 

[Kurt Hulst]

AR, MS,TN

I chased with Bob Hartig, Bill, and Tom Osterban.

WE left MI at 3am and drove till we finally intercepted our first supercell that had originated in Texarkana, and scaved LIT, and we caught it in Augusta west of Wynn. It looked like it wanted to put down a tornado and we chased it north for some time until it was moving to fast for us to catch.

This is the supercell as it was racing to the NE.

We then headed back south just east of agust and caught a second supercell coming up from Loanoke. This one became outflow dominant as it approached and fell apart but had some appealing visual characteristics.

Outflow:

WE then headed to Forrest City to intercept another cell but that looked all strung out as well. WE then decided to head south to cross the border into MS at Helena hoping for more initiation in a better CAPE environment. We worked our way back north from there. As we approached Memphis we intercepted a semi descent structured storm with a nice wall cloud that unfortunately like all other storms of the day was forced to become outflow dominant.

It had a nice low hanging wall cloud but we were out of position to take pictures of this but i may post some of the pictures on my final report on the site. Http://midwestchasers.com

 

[Skip Talbot]

Chad already covered our chase here, but here's a link to the log I just got up. Nothing much more than some pretty shots:
http://www.skip.cc/chase/080410/

 

[Chad Cowan]

Finally got the video up on YouTube. Each time I thought I was done I remembered something else I wanted to add- like satellite and radar. I did find a nice surprise when going over the radar and time lapse.. I don't think we noticed this at the time, but from our vantage point we could see the base and meso of the storm we were targeting and also the base and (maybe) wall cloud of the tail-end cell, all back lit by the setting sun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFCxgeUiwYI