4/25/07 REPORTS: OK/ KS / MO

[Russel Parsons]

4/25/07 REPORTS: OK/ KS / MO / AR

I decided to see if I could hunt down any of the low topped/mini supercells in my own backyard. I ended up on one of the first supercells to fire, located south of Centralia, Oklahoma. It did have a very persistent wall cloud for quite awhile. The best wall cloud structure that I saw from the storm was approximately two miles southeast of Centralia. I drove a lot of the back roads to stay with it, until I finally couldn't see it anymore due to rain developing to my east near Chetopa, Kansas. Overall, this wasn't a bad backyard chase at all.

 

[Brian Emfinger]

Chase Report for today and yesterday

I also did a backyard chase and was rewarded. Storms popped along line NE of Fort Smith. Storms werent very organized for most of the time but all of a sudden when I was just north of Ozark (back at home!) a wall cloud suddenly developed. It was very narrow but the rotation was obvious...it went on to become a bit more organized with a broader base and rotation picked up a few times but nothing near tornadic... i got some decent video. Crazy that I drove about 700 miles yesterday to see basically nothing and this was 5 miles from hom

 

[Dan Robinson]

Caught a nice mini-supercell north of Springfield, Missouri. After leaving Wichita, we played around with some cold-core storms in southeast Kansas and northeast Oklahoma today, covering ground from Sedan, KS to Bartlesville, OK. The activity was not showing much promise after a few hours, so we decided to begin the trek back east toward home.

After passing through a developing cell's precip core on I-44 at Springfield, I looked back to see this, and promptly exited the highway:

We followed this storm north for the next two hours. At first, we drove right up under the area where the wall cloud was trying to condense. As we approached, cool west winds suddenly turned to southeasterly inflow. We watched for a while longer, when a large RFD slot developed and the lowering grew larger. Rising motion was modest but persistent. The base took on a rounded appearance with a horseshoe shape.

After a few minutes, the small wall cloud's rotation and rising motion increased, and condensation began reaching downward further. The huge RFD cut was very impressive. The storm was tiny with meager inflow at the surface, but nonetheless, at this point the overall structure was getting me excited.

A few times, a pointy tail cloud condensed diagonally toward the ground, making the lowering a classic 'fakenado'. So much so I wondered how long it would take for someone to report it as a tornado/funnel cloud.

Here is the wall cloud at its most organized point. Persistent and clear rotation was noted here. I was close to calling this in.

We saw only one other chase vehicle on this cell. A nice catch for a day that initially promised little.

 

[Terry Tyler]

west-central mississippi

today was a really good day...i felt satisfied with what i found...

also, today is the first day i was really on top of the logistics of the chase...i had all the public librarys in the area mapped out on my map, and bob schafer helped us out with some nowcasting as well...

we arrived in matheston, MS around 10AM...a little too early, but it was cool...there was some pre-frontal convection occuring far ahead of the main line, and it was a little multicell-line that had some light rain with it, but a nice looking leading edge...

we posted up at the library, and waited till about 1230, when the MD come out for the tornado ww, and we then headed to the winona, MS public library...there we discovered a tornado watch was out and there were alot of severe cells...we got on 55 south, and go to another public library in durant...the library personel were interested in the storm chasing thing and i explained to them about what we were doing and whatnot...

we discovered about 7 counties under SVR warning, and two buck looking cells on radar...i planned out the route, and began to go...thats when things got fun...

the storm had real nice updraft...

the winds were pretty intense when it came through, and the locals were very concerned about the situation...take a look at this shot, you can see the numbers getting blown off this sign...you cant see in the still, but that stop sign was going back and forth...

these guys were apparently running for cover when the outflow began to rip through the area...got me 371 new miles...

 

[John Farley]

I ended up on the same mini-supercell as Dan Robinson, and all in all had a much better day than the previous one, as I chased across SE Kansas, NE Oklahoma, and SW Missouri. I will post a full report on my Web site later, but the basic story is I got on 4 storms or clusters of storms. The first was around noon near Chanute, KS, then in the early afternoon between Bartlesville, OK and Coffeyville, KS, then in the later afternoon I followed storms from Joplin to Springfield, MO, finally toward sunset ending in the narrowing area between the line of storms I had been on between Joplin and Springfield and the mini-supercell north of Springfield.

Except for the storm north of Springfield, the storms were more linear and multicell than I expected. Some of the storms in the line of storms that I chased from Joplin to Springfield, through the Pierce City and Monnett areas, had the appearance of HP storms embedded in the line. Basically, a lowered area - I guess you could call it a wall cloud - would form under an updraft in an area of RFB between two areas of precipitation. Then precip would fill in quickly behind it, and it would either wrap up in rain or morph into something more of a shelf cloud. Here is one such feature over Joplin, on a storm that went SVR warned around the time I took this picture:

This feature had looked better a few minutes earlier, but by the time I got where I could stop and get a picture, it was already wraping up in rain.

Here is another that formed a little farther down the line, about over Pierce City:

This time the area behind it filled in, and it became elongated and more of a shelf cloud feature. But the northern end of the feature remained lowered quite persistently as the storm moved toward Springfield.

By this time the mini-supercell north of Springfield had gotten my attention, and I broke off and headed north toward it. As Dan mentioned, it did have a very persistent wall cloud. The wall cloud dissipated shortly after I caught up with the storm near March, MO, but I did see some rotation just before it dissipated. Here are 3 pictures, taken with decreasing distance from this storm:

Contrast slightly enhanced to better show features

A more detailed report with additional pictures is now available at:

http://www.johnefarley.com/chase42507.htm

Or you can follow the links to this and all my reports from my main weather page at:

http://www.johnefarley.com/wx.htm