4/26/07 REPORTS: IN / OH

[cdcollura]

Good day everyone,

Intercepted some severe storms in eastern Indiana / West-SW Ohio ahead of approaching low pressure system. Some small hail / strong winds were encountered with the stronger storms, one of which, had "mini HP" supercell characteristics in Union County, Indiana southwest of Liberty.

Full chase log (plus much more) at the link below...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/mwcl2007.htm#APR26

The storm was short-lived, and ahead of a line of storms, but had the structure in the picture(s) below...

Above, small HP storm in Union County, Indiana.

Above is an interesting clear slot behind the storm as line caught up with it.

 

[Doyle McIntosh]

Watched the squall line roll through Muncie this evening. Nothing to exciting, a fairly organized shelf cloud, small wind gusts and frequent lightning.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Chased around the Lexington, Kentucky area today, a convenient setup on our way home from our first Plains chase trip. We watched a cell develop just northwest of town that quickly condensed a nicely-shaped wall cloud complete with inflow tail. The storm was racing to the NE, and with few road options to intercept, we let it go in favor of more development moving toward us from the SW. We watched the original storm move north with rock-hard convection punching through pileus caps. The structure down low looked great and I wish we could have stayed with it - but 40mph NE storm motions and Kentucky roads do not mix. This storm soon began hooking in on radar with long-lived rotation markers on both WxWorx and GRLevel3, and was tornado warned for at least 2 hours as it moved into Ohio.

We hung around Lexington to wait for the action from the south to move in, which quickly lined out before arriving. We stayed ahead of the storms east along I-64 all the way to the WV state line. Despite intermittent tornado and severe warnings for this line, we saw nothing visually to get excited about. A shelf cloud and a few nice CGs were the only items of note.

Near Morehead, Matt got a decent lightning strike on video that produced a bright orange glow on the mountainside where it hit. I'll post that and a few other shots sometime soon. Finally back in Charleston to try to save up some chase funds for the next western trough.

 

[Gary Stofer]

Chased to the front of a line segment south of Trafalgar, and a developing cell west of Spencer, Indiana before sunset. Always neat to look at, the Spencer cell had a nice structure, but as usual in this area they tend to die off before they can get anything significant going.

Collage of images down at trafalgar:
http://www.wrathofnature.com/images/04262007.avi
(xvid codec required)

Lowering:

More images here:
http://www.wrathofnature.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=106

 

[Justin Rudicel]

Well once again we just can't get any discrete supercells in the state of Indiana. However me and a couple other Met students adventured out across Central Indiana around 3:30pm. We started from Muncie, Indiana and head north of I-69 then went west toward Marion, Indiana. We noticed that none of the storms had really become celluar so we decided to wait. By around 5:30pm the storms looked like they were trying to organize a litttle better. So we adventure south and west of Marion to intercept. This storm at the time of the pictures showed some signs of stregthening with a nice VIL core. However only managed to produce this decent shelf cloud with modest winds of 35-40 mph wind gusts and very heavy rain. We tried to stay ahead of it to see if the head of the bow would produce anything but it didn't and seem to weak after these pictures were taken. I will try to post the pictures A.S.A.P.....

 

[Kurt Hulst]

Monday I intercepted a tornado warned storm (Berrien Co. MI)shortly after it produced two tornadoes by the IN/MI border. I was about 3 miles north of the border in Galean MI as it still had a nice lowering and wall cloud which I could see as I was driving to Galean. Once I got to a point were I found an open field it was already gusting out a bit. I then moved on towards Buchanan. I was able to see strong tight rotation in the base of the storm and by then Xm was showing a SCIT/donut marker just to my north in the exact spot this rotation was occurring. I then stopped on a side road and observed it condense into a large horizontal cone funnel and then developed into a small 1/4 to 1/2 way to the ground funnel and quickly die. It was severely undercut by the out flow westerly winds. I thought I had video of this whole sequence but in review there was nothing there. I can only guess that I hit the wrong button in the heat of the moment as I was giving directions to an elderly couple trying to get to Holland. I was kind of upset. It was still awesome to see this feature especially in Michigan. I have a few pictures but nothing worth posting.