4/25/10 REPORTS: MD/VA/SC

[Jason Foster]

A short chase/intercept with (I believe) less than 100 miles driven. The most interesting part....actually having a chaser convergence in Maryland.

WHAT? Yup, Bill Hark and myself happen to run into each other in Maryland, west of Frederick, Maryland after following some storms that may or may not have produced a tornado (read below).

My day started off at home, calling, and calling, and calling my buddy to figure out why the Sprint account wasn't allowing me to sign on. Well, that never got fixed. Finally, I just had to figure I was going without. So I did, leaving the Gaithersburg area around 4:30pm EDT. I headed due west as that was where the sun was, the higher cape and slightly better helicity.

Mark Ellinwood save my butt some today with some nowcasting. It saved me because after crossing the Potomac River (via ferry no less) the air was so hazy, visibility was down to 1/2 mile at this point (and didn't improve) so there was no "going visual" today. He text me the new TOR warning that was just a little north and west of me. I could sorta here it on NOAA WXradio, but it was weak and choppy. I heard some local repeater people mentioning it too. I raced up US 15 from Leesburg and got to the tornado warned cell in plenty of time. There was a lot of emergency vehicles responding to the area of the tornado report, but nothing on SPC has shown up yet. I did see some interesting structure at the base for just a few minutes after crossing back into Maryland, but it was transitioning to outflow dominate quickly.

Mark let me know he didn't see anything exciting anymore by this point and I pretty much knew to just sit and watch and play in the rain. Around this time is when I ran into Bill Hark. We chatted, took each other's photo (will post a little later) and headed off again, he a little sooner than me to the south. I played with the cells a little as I followed the cells back toward my home. I ended the chase fairly close to home...which never happened before.

I didn't bother with the second line that (has just) came through. It wasn't severe warned at all, just a lot of rain (and one very powerful thunder blast a few minutes ago).

I'll share some photos a little later.

 

[Erik Perozo]

4/25/10 REPORTS: SC

Maybe the Admins can join this thread with the VA/MD one.

Quick chase today. Started the day out in Columbia,SC. Noticed some small cells popping up on radar around 4, so upon further investigation in what type environment the cells were moving in I decided to chase the one storm that formed over Columbia. I noticed there was around 2000 J/kg SB CAPE in the area which tapered off to around 1000 closer to Wilmington. Shear was really good with Mesoanalysis showing around 450 m2/s2 0-3 SRH and 200-250 m2/s2 0-1 SRH. 0-1 Shear vectors were around 30kts with 0-6 Shear around 60kts. 0-3km CAPE was good as well around 150J/kg. Upon looking at these parameters I figured things could get interesting. Intercepted the cell just outside of Columbia and followed it slowly to Bishopville where I stopped at a Gas Station to watch the first wall cloud form. Chased it to the other side of Bishopville where it dropped the tornado. I had to stop as I looked back to my West and noticed a nice looking LP Supercell. Even though I knew there was a possible tornado on the ground I had to stop to take a pic of the LP. I mean how many times in your life will you ever get to see an LP this far East. Anywho, continued on with the storm until I ran into house debris across road which caused me to backtrack about 2 miles. Once I noticed there was help at the house that just got demolished by the tornado I moved along as I didn't want to get in the way. After I got back on the right track I chased the tornado into Darlington where I caught a brief glimpse of a Cone tornado, tried to take a pic but the light was so low the pic came out blurred. Once the tornado moved through Darlington I continued to track the storm another 30 miles east until Dark. Not a bad unexpected chase day. The structure on these storms were pretty impressive, especially for the Southeast.

First Wall Cloud

Wall Cloud 20mins before Tornado

LP Looking West

Backside of storm around time of initial tornado touchdown

 

[Jason Foster]

Here da pics

Not a tornado people!

Neither is this!

Kinda looks like palm trees...but they are baby walnut trees.

 

[Bill Hark]

Here is my chase account and image from May 25th in Maryland and West Virginia.

http://www.harkphoto.com/04252010.html

Bill Hark

 

[Gerard Jebaily]

I was able to intercept the same storm near the town of Oats which is close to Darlington, SC. I was able to shoot some HD video of the tornado which can be seen in SD here.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=We-nlwKJ2Kw&feature=player_embedded



This is only a short clip of it for the time being.

I will have the uncut HD video up as soon as I get it watermarked and I am happy with the quality.


NWS Wilmington was a little late on the tornado warning for this storm.

I initially called in a report of a rapidly rotating wall cloud with a brief funnel cloud appearing at 7:34 PM EST. I was told by NWS Wilmington that there was a SVR TSTM warning on the storm. I was expecting that they would put out a tornado warning for it but they told me to just call back if i saw anything else. 4 minutes later i called them back with a tornado on the ground. It took them another 4 mins before I heared the EAS tones go out for the tornado warning and at that point it had leveled a two story house, two barns, and damaged a few other homes. I was pretty upset that ILM didn't put out a TOR WRN when i called in the funnel cloud and rapidly rotating wall cloud. Oh well I dont know exactly what was going on there or what they were seeing.

I was later cut off by trees down on the road and I ended up helping three people out of pile of debris that used to be their house about a min after their house was destroyed. The preliminary strength of the tornado was a strong EF-2 with winds estimated of 130 MPH.



Full photo album here

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2417644&id=9600455&l=158febed17

Note the truck underneath what was left of the house.