5/10/08 REPORTS: KS/OK/MO/AR/TX/MS/GA/AL

[Chris Wilburn]

This is a day I will never forget that is for sure. I live in Miami which is only approx. 5 miles from Picher where the destructive tornado touched down. I began my chase not expecting much. I headed to Nowata hoping for new development along the dryline east of I35. I was about to give up when the storm near Chetopa, KS went tornado warned. I busted towards Miami from Vinita on I44. Once I got to Miami I continued heading east of I44 and came to a stop approx. 5 miles east of Miami on I44. At first I could only see the base of the storm but as a few minutes passed by it was apparent there was a possibly large tornado already in progress. The storm began to push southeast and became more visible to see. It was at this time that I confirmed that there was a large wedge tornado on the ground approx. 4-5 miles north of I 44 just northeast of Miami. The tornado lasted about 7-8 minutes before getting wrapped in rain. A few minutes after this a stovepipe tornado was visible approx. 2-3 miles of my location just north of I44. The tornado then again went rain wrapped and continued on its southeast course and crossed I44. I never saw the tornado again as it was once again wrapped in rain as it crossed I44. I didn't want to chase on the interstate but it gave me the best way to the torn. warned storm. Since I was on I44 I was very limited on where I could go. This along with the fast storm speed I decided to break off and go look at some damage.

I arrived in the town of Picher via back roads since the main roads were blocked. Picher isn't a big town at all but the south part of town where many homes were located was heavily damaged. I would estimate the damage path to be a solid 1/2 miles and more than likely closer to 3/4 of a mile from my estimation. Many homes were leveled all of the way to the foundation. At the time of this writing there have been nine confirmed fatalities and many more injured with people still reportedly trapped in their homes. At least three life flight helicopters were on the scene when I arrived. I am not expert on damage, but I would agree that it appears to be EF-3 damage just based on what I have seen on tv before and the fact that some homes were leveled with nothing but the foundation left. I am at work now and have no way to post any video now but I will have a few clips up early in the morning.

A couple of these clips are very short.........10-15 seconds. They are what I uploaded to the station I chase for. The other clip is approx. 25 seconds long. I will try to get some longer clips up later, but not sure if I have any. Everything happened so quick and my tripod got knocked over that I couldn't film longer than I did.

Stovepipe tornado viewed from 5 miles east of Miami looking north on I44 toward Picher.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2obd362ZaM

Large wedge tornado shortly before the stovepipe viewed from the same location.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-aKmv1QepQ

Damage in Picher, OK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqKYmKEptD0

 

[Jeff Piotrowski]

Intercepted the storm west of Stuttgart, AR on Hwy 165. About 5 miles west of Stuttgart we knew the tornado was going into the city we called 911 and told them that they were in the path of this beast. At one time it looked like the whole meso was on the ground. We got into central Stuttgart as the tornado ripped through the southern end of the city. Lots of damage, a few injuries, but luckily no deaths. It's funny, we just stopped at a gas station NW of Little Rock and a guy asked "What the hell happened to you guys?" It's been a long day.

Jeff

 

[Joey Ketcham]

Short verison..... Tyler Costantini, Bart Comstock and myself chased eastern Oklahoma staying around the Sallisaw, Stigler, McAlester area getting on the tornado warned storms that went through the area... long story short, didn't see anything. I will say this....... never again am I chasing in Eastern Oklahoma or Arkansas, Saturday was the first I've chased in this area and it'll be the last, it is impossible and pointless to chase in this area.. absolutely horrible.

 

[Brian Emfinger]

My wife and I had a fun and stressfull chase through the mountains and jungle of southeast Oklahoma. I started from home (Ozark, AR) just after noon. I wanted to head down to Waldron but there were a few little storms popping up W of McAlester and so I headed to Sallisaw. On the way there I was encouraged as a storm moving into NW Arkansas became tornado warned. I ended up going past Sallisaw and checking out the storms just west of there. They had developed into a little line of several severe storms. I checked out each of the storms before dropping down to the next one. The last storm was the strongest but I couldn't get through Poteau before it crossed through. I tried to get around it but with the roads and storm speed it didnt work out. I noticed some enhanced cumulus developing again west of McAlester so I decided to head back towards Sallisaw. The storms developed pretty good and instead of heading to Sallisaw I headed straight west at them towards Stigler. I then started to have data issues as always happens in SE Oklahoma. I ended up dropping south from Whitefield to Kinta (thanks to Karen Politte who verified that I did indeed need to do that!) to intercept the now tornado warned storm. I had to drop further south towards Robbers Cave State Park/Wilburton as the storm continued to turn even more southeasterly. When we got to between Robbers Cave SP and Wilburton it got a bit stressful as the the tv station I chase for informed me the rotation was very strong and very near my location. I think I got just south fast enough to avoid trouble. I didn't see the tornado that happened somewhere near there about that time. I then got on 270 and headed East from Wilburton. The RFD winds wrapping around the storm out of the north were quite strong. We were actually under the edge of the anvil and under partly cloudy skies as we were blasted by heavy rain and strong RFD. We were probably 5 miles from the circ so I would have to say this was some of the strongest RFD I have experienced at that distance from the circulaton center. At Red Oak we dropped south but the road was extremely curvy and we lost ground. We actually did catch up a bit as we got to Talihina and we headed south of there to Indian Highway. We were about halfway between Talihina and Honobia when we had to make our way through some possible tornado damage. I didn't have time to inspect too much but it definately could have been tornadic damage. After we managed to get through (literally) the downed trees our road turned to dirt past Honobia even though the maps say it shouldnt have. I guess they were resurfacing the road or something as nearly the entire way had road construction and we nearly got stuck several times but finally we made it to HWY 259. We were behind some storm (no data or cell) so we hopefully (hoping for no hail or tornado!) punched through. We somehow missed any hail and sometime around 830pm we got to Broken Bow. We were able to check radar and saw a strong storm bearing down on us. We then got blasted by some strong RFD again and we took cover downwind of a building. We nearly got hit by a shopping cart that went flying by! After that I took a few pics of the departing storm and then we headed home.

A few more pictures - HERE

edit: Verne Carlson's report mentioned bigfoot and that reminded me that my wife noticed bigfoot tracks on the road right after we passed through the possible tornado path. There were several miles of these tracks. We were a few miles NW of Honobia which is where there have been lots of Bigfoot sightings and they apparently even hold a Bigfoot Festival there. Anyway, I wish I could have been the first to tie storm chasing in with bigfoot but Verne beat me too it!

 

[Ben Prusia]

Post update with picture:

I have my full chase report up on my website: http://www.vortexpursuit.com/2008-0510.html. The only storm I really intercepted was the first tornado warned storm in Kansas in Labette/western Cherokee Counties (intercepted along US-160 west of Altamont). Attached is a picture (can't add picture to previous post) showing a tornado near Oswego, Kansas (right side of middle tree--and it was a few miles away from my location). The main storm of the day moved too rapidly and in a not-so-friendly east-southeasterly direction making it hard to keep up with and get in front of the storm. Overall, a good chase.

My thoughts out to the victims of these storms.

 

[Shane Adams]

We got a late start (not really as it turned out) so we decided to just go east on I-40 out ahead of where we expected things to fire. Our plan all day was to stay well ahead of any storm until it went tornadic, then do our best to get up close and get a view of whatever was beneath as it flew by. We sat in Van Buren while a trio of early-day storms formed southwest and went severe. We liked the southern-most storm best, so we repositioned south to Booneville, in an attempt to intercept it, thinking it would go tornadic as it approached. It ended up crapping out, so we then decided to make a play for later convection that would be coming out of SE Oklahoma, so we went southeast towards Hot Springs. Along the way, a new storm formed behind us to the WNW but didn't really get going much. Over the next hour it finally went severe, as we stayed about 20-30 miles ESE of it, waiting for it to go crazy. When it finally started to show a hook, we pulled the trigger, got aggressive, and took a north turn headed on a collision course with the storm. The plan was to beat it to the interstate and then give ourselves options north or east from there. What actually happened was the road we ended up on wasn't even on my map, the storm beat us to the interstate, and we ended up driving east inside the hook (per radar). We drove about a mile then stopped, to let it move east of us so we knew we were out of danger (40-ft pines either side offered no chance to see a tornado coming right at us). Once we felt we were safe, we continued east but, like so many others today, the roads absolutely killed us. We'd been on this storm from its birth, for over an hour, and right as it exploded, we lost it....this storm went on to produce the damaging Stuttgart, AR tornado.

The storms that fired in SE Oklahoma were somehow only moving 30-35mph, so trying to get back west to those was futile, with as far east as we already were. Everything else near us all day moved 50-60mph. Today was all about timing, and ours was off when it counted. A look at SPC tornado report maps reveals insult to injury; my target (SW Arkansas) is the only spot in the overall risk area from today that saw no tornadoes.

Shoulda went to work.

 

[Brandon Goforth]

I started out just SE of McAlester, OK, in Savanna to be exact. Observed rapid initiation to the west and northwest of my location. Most of it was moving in an ENE direction, so I made the decision to go south to Kiowa, then follow highway 63 back NE toward Haileyville with the HOPE of staying just to the SE of the south storm that had fired. First mistake of the day. Well, that turned out to be a bad idea because it caused me to miss the McAlester tornado. What I should have done is just drive back through McAlester in the first place and then drop back SE, but what's done is done and once you commit out here there's no going back. Anyways, I was sitting between Hartshorne and Gowen on highway 270 waiting for the McAlester storm to come across and show itself when a new storm began exploding to the south quickly moving in my direction and screwing up my perfect view with heavy rain and hail, so...I decided to go back to the SE and jump on this one. Weaved through the hills and came out of the rain NE of Yanush to see a large cone approaching Yanush from the west. I hit highway 63 east, but the storm was moving even more to the SE, and the tornado warned cell to the north was quickly closing in on me now after losing time in the hills, so I had to bail and try to get to Talihina fast and get south before I got rolled. Well, at the time I was east of Yanush, I had no internet, visibility was poor, and I had no roads to work with. That stretch of road between Yanush and Talihina seemed like the road from hell at that point. As soon as I got a mile or two east of Buffalo Valley heading toward Talihina I hit heavy rain once again...went another 2-3 miles and into view came a long, slender white tornado in a field about 1/4 mile north of me on highway 63! This thing was totally obscured in heavy rain, I would have never seen it if I wouldn't have almost driven right into it! Got into Talihina and there was just enough breaks in the rain to see some rapidly rotating funnels over my head, and debris was falling in town, mostly in the form of tree limbs. I got to the south edge of town and decided to pull over and ride it out. I couldn't see anything, and there was really no way out given the extreme lack of roads. I hated eastern OK before this chase, and now I only hate it more, although it does make for a good story. Nonetheless, the stretch between Yanush and Talihina was a bad place to be at that time, and adding to the fact that I had no internet and no visibility really, that could've gotten bad fast given that we were dealing with storms that were capable of producing strong, and possibly violent tornadoes. Honestly, I think there were several rain wrapped tornadoes in that mess. After it blew over, I tried to follow from behind down highway 63, but was unable to get back into position because of the extremely crappy roads. I mean the roads make chasing impossible. Shift everything back into extreme western OK and it would have made for a nice day.

 

[Jim Bishop]

My fiancee (MaryLeigh) and I saw the full life of the Picher, OK tornado from I-44 thanks to the help of Simon Brewer's nowcasting. It began as a large wedge, became rainwrapped, and then emerged out of the rain and become a violent stovepipe. It crossed I-44 wrapped in rain but debris was basically raining from the sky. It reminded me of the Girard/Franklin Kansas tornado of May 4, 2003.

It's very late so I'll have the footage on Stormgasm.com sometime Sunday. In the meantime look for the footage on ABC.

 

[Tim Marshall]

SHORT: I stayed in Texas and sampled three supercells. Got more than I bargained for in Cooper, TX when a downburst sacked me. I took refuge in a car wash and encountered white-out conditions with 60-80 MPH winds. Trees and power lines were downed, some roofs were torn off, and one structure collapsed trapping occupants. Emergency crews responded immediately and I reported the event to the local NWS.

LONG: My target was Paris, TX with alternate target of Fort Smith, AR, but the hills and trees in E OK and W AR, made me stay south. So, I waited in Sherman, TX for the dryline cooking in 100+ heat index with mid-70 dewpoint air. After an hour or so, a storm developed to my south over Fort Worth and moved east into Dallas. I intercepted this storm over Dallas. It was a sucker storm - LP type that promptly croaked when I arrived. Of course, new convection formed northwest of Sherman -where I had been an hour earlier. I decided to angle northeast towards Paris to intercept. I arrived to an HP supercell with nice vault and inflow bands. It was quite hazy though, so I had to get up close to it. There were lots of anvil Cg's, so I stayed in the car. Then, another supercell developed on its flank and headed southeast toward the town of Cooper, TX. I decided to find a car wash and ride out the core to get some hail video. As I drove into town, I was lucky to find a car wash in which to seek refuge. The core hit a few minutes later and BAM -suddenly there was white-out conditions, 60-80 MPH winds, and the electric power went out. It looked like a hurricane. After a few minutes, I emerged to find trees and power lines were downed throughout town, some roofs were removed, and one structure had collapsed trapping occupants. Police communications were affected when their radio tower was bent over. I managed to slowly make my way out of town around the downed trees and power lines before returning to Dallas. I definitely got more than I bargained for -except no hail video. TM

 

[Karen Politte]

Unlike so many who got behind it on the south side, Jason and I decided to bust on the Stuttgart, AR storm in a new and unusual way. Actually, we busted on three separate tornado-warned storms within two hours. If that's some sort of record, somebody please let me know.

Anyway, we left home around 11am and sat in north L.R. for the late morning and early afternoon. Saw Currens on Spotter Network blasting down I-40, LOL. Monitoring data and sitting on the north side of the warm front, we deemed it was best to head south to Pine Bluff and assess from there, as the high-CAPE air, sunshine, and cu fields were all down in that vicinity and at the time it looked like southern AR to southeastern AR may be the place to be. Arrived in Pine Bluff (a.k.a. the Armpit of Arkansas) at approx. 2.00PM, and sat up near the mall in their spacious parking lot for hours watching data. Took my compass out and stood in the middle of their parking lot watching our winds veer from southeasterly to southerly to southwesterly. Great. Our benign cu field stayed that way for the longest time, and Jason and I partook in a game of "catch the Mardi Gras beads" in the stiff southerly winds. I really need a Frisbee.

So 4PM came and went, the afternoon threatened to turn into evening, and our cu field began to dissipate. AR appeared to be under the influence of an upper level shortwave ridge, and was still pre-upper-support arriving. Meanwhile, there were thundershowers moving into north-central and west-central AR from some OK junk that rung our alarm bells and, considering that it was far more fruitful of an idea to head back north towards L.R., AND see "some" type of convection - we thankfully left Pine Bluff and headed back towards L.R. Halfway between Pine Bluff and L.R., while watching the thundershowers on radar closely (we're all too familiar with what disorganized thundershowers can do in these parts), I had the opportunity to nowcast for Brian Emfinger who was trying to grapple with the McAlester storms around that time they were going tornadic. Hopefully I helped out - if so, I at least came away something from yesterday.

Anyways - we got some gas in L.R., and sat up in the parking lot of the Clinton Library for an hour or so at 5PM. While gazing wistfully at the array of convection - both mushy and somewhat harder - exploding and dancing above my head, I spotted a really neat midlevel funnel backlit by the blue sky, which was extending from a tiny piece of ragged cu. We jumped out and Jason snatched some video. Pretty cool. After that excitement, we saw that an isolated area of harder convection to our northeast near Carlisle, AR was looking a bit stronger on radar - although not yet severe. Favoring this over the junk moving into west L.R., we headed east on I-40 to intercept this area of multicellular storms and see what it had.

Then things started to go downhill in a hurry.

Once we got to near Carlisle and realized that we had gained no ground on the storm driving at 75mph for approx. 30 minutes, and taken a look at GRL3 and realized that the (now severe-warned) southernmost storm of the mess that moved into western L.R. was now threatening to have an appendage (couple of profanities slipped out here), we cut loose from the storm we were pursuing which was now bearing down on wherever (I dunno - De Valls Bluff by now???) and doubled-back to target the southern L.R. storm which was looking quite threatening. Indeed, no sooner had we done this than a TOR was issued for it. And - no sooner had this happened than our entire laptop crashed due to a problem downloading a SpotterNetwork update. Every window froze, we lost our GPS fix and could not re-acquire, and GRL3 ceased updating. The machine wouldn't even restart from windows, so I had to jam the power button down and forcefully make it switch OFF.

With no data and a blank laptop screen, we entered the northern extent of the two tornadic supercell's cores around Lonoke. Blinding rain and intense CGs abound, along with terrified drivers slamming on their brakes led to us trying to thread our way into the city again. My nerves began to get a tad bit filed here, I must admit. At long, long last the laptop finally rebooted, and we managed to bring up GRL3 again to see what was going on. Our GPS program would still not acquire a fix. The southernmost supercell moving across south L.R. was looking downright scary and was taking a fix on England, and the initial lead updraft had retained it's supercellular characteristics and couplet and placed itself just east of our interest storm, leading to the NWS's long, rectangular TOR box to cover all of the possible areas of rotation.

So there we were, with no GPS, skirting the north side of two tornadic supercells, unsure of what the hell we could - or wanted - to do. We pulled off at Exit 161 in blinding rain and small hail and went into the third round with our GPS software and finally got it working. But it was too little too late. Way back in Lonoke, where we had had a south road option, we should have taken it - right at the point our whole laptop croaked. Our tornadic supercells continued munching through the countryside to our south by about 15-20 miles at 55mph. The only option that was realistic that would give us hope to witness the intensifying southernmost storm was to head south of where we were currently on 391 (Valentine Rd.) and try and thread the needle in-between the two hooks, placing ourselves just east of the most intense storm.

We started our route south and immediately got blinded by torrential rain, small hail, and pretty high winds. Our road skirted "Faulkner Lake", and not only did we have to worry about our situation w/r/t the storms, but we also had to worry about encountering flooding. Some low-lying areas of the road were already starting to get standing water on them. We travelled two miles down this road at 40mph in blinding conditions before I started to feel sick to my stomach and decided to initiate my "is this really a good idea?" sequence. We pulled off in some random piece of parking lot at god-knows-where and assessed again while the winds went crazy and the clouds above our rain raced northeast. Radar pretty much told us everything - it was hopeless. The strong tornadic storm was already almost due south of us, and also a new type of storm had been identified - the "Bodyguard Storm". The supercell that had been east of the strongest one had slid - all the while retaining it's strong-possibly-tornadic couplet - in above the main storm of interest, piggy-backing it. Two potentially tornadic couplets oriented in a N-S line doesn't make for a very good intercept of the southernmost storm if you begin on the north side of the complex.

Weak.

So obviously we prized our lives more than the chase and abandoned the whole chase, opting to head north to the interstate again before we got ourselves into any sort of real trouble. The drive back north to I-40 was one of my less favored in several years, and we managed to "identify" or "sample" a circulation into the bargain as well. Strong north winds rushed into "something" behind us as we crawled north and passed many vehicles pulled off the road, the winds smashed into the trees on the side of our road, and then a second later we had westerly winds pushing the driven precip into the driver's side of the vehicle. I only knew that we had come uncomfortably close (for me) to yet another one of those rain-wrapped *somethings* (just like on Dumas day last year). In retrospect, this may have been the developing circulation that went on to produce the "possible brief touchdown" mentioned in SPC's logs as: 00202 E LONOKE LONOKE AR34799186POSSIBLE BRIEF TOUCHDOWN WAS REPORTED AT MILE MARKER 173 JUST SOUTH OF INTERSTATE 40. (LZK)


We got back to I-40 and assessed data again all the while noting that the storm to our east that we let go had gone TOR too. Two busts down - but we still had one left in us - and that was reserved for the Searcy TOR storm. We attempted to salvage something and blasted northeast on 167 towards this big, meaty SUP, and somewhere just east of Cabot it became obvious that this rocketing storm was also outwith our grasp, and we threw our hands up and gave in on the day.

Frustrating day and very sad to hear of the loss of life and much damage that came from yesterday's outbreak.

KP

 

[Evan Bookbinder]

Admittedly, chasing was the last thing on my mind yesterday given the obvious target area in the forest/mountains of the Ouchita/Ozarks chain over SE OK, AR, etc... Initial elevated storms that went up around noon across srn MO/AR were moving over 60 mph.

Was talking to Mike Umscheid about some stuff early afternoon when we noticed that the sfc low in central KS was really taking on a nice structure with a classic narrow thermal axis/moisture surge nosing into SE KS. Hodographs were already great, and continued to improve further as the low stratus and anvil debris to the north continued to sharpen a developing warm front over SE KS. My brother-in-law Dave Galbraith from PA is in town, and having never seen hail (nevermind a supercell), I wanted to give him a taste -- oh little did we know what was in store.

So around 2:30 (after fumbling with data connections, etc..), off we went down Highway 71 with nothing on radar. Temp 59F and -DZ/-RA and low overcast. Lovely. I happened to make the off-hand comment to Dave that most good tornado days (like my wedding day 5/4/03) start off this way.

As we headed south along the MO/KS border, temps slowly climbed into the mid 60s while a single nice supercell developed in s central KS, then strangely vanished behind multi-cell activity developing just downstream.
After a series of mergers, nothing looked all that appetizing, but a 61 knot gust at Parsons and a decent hail core were all that loomed to our west, so at Carthage we headed west toward Columbus KS on MO96/YY to intercept some hail/wind for him at least. I kept thinking how strange that radar evolution was, considering the environment was now overwhelmingly supportive of discrete supercells. As we turned onto MO 96, I knew we hit the right spot when under low overcast the temp suddenly jumped to 77F in less than 2 miles. In a course of about 20 minutes (roughly 5PM) radar showed this storm reorganizing in shocking fashion w/ an immense hail core and a developing mesocyclone. Even from 10-12 miles away it just looked like a black mess with no structure. A second storm rapidly developed just to its south that (radar-wise) had supercell structure right out of the gate. However, with the northern storm still dominant, I stuck to our initial target of Columbus.

Just as we got to US400 outside Columbus, we came underneath the northern storm and it's clear that it is being rapidly overtaken. A rainfilled storm base with a remnant 'funnel'/wall cloud was obliterated in about 2 minutes. Sigh. It was apparent the 'baby' southern storm had taken over and was organizing/growing at record speed. I can't recall a storm with such amazing radar presentation so early in its life cycle. Given prior storm motion of east at 50 mph, I didn't think we had a chance to catch up to it, but we decided to give it a shot, figuring we'd at least trail it into SW MO before heading back to Kansas City.

Heading down US400, it was clear on radar that this storm was now an HP monster, with an eye catching 75 dBZ hail core. It had slowed down and was taking a right turn. Road options aren't great down there and I really didn't want to punch an HP storm (not knowing what's in it or on the other side), so we headed south on US400, trying to trail it until we could get to I-44. Bad choice. This storm had really slowed down and we proceed to hit a deluge of golf balls just north of Baxter Springs. Giving Dave a quick lesson in radar interpretation, it was apparent that even bigger hail was falling just south of us. Golf balls are enough, and I like my low insurance rates, so we took refuge for a couple minutes and called the report into my old office NWS SGF. Mind you the distance this storm is from ICT and SGF radars made it extremely difficult to determine within <5-7 nm where any tornado would be within this beast. Thankfully Steve Runnels (SGF WCM) told me to hold off as they were getting reports of a tornado and damage just to our south, and we later learned softball size hail. Whew.

We waited about 5 minutes for the hail to let up, and proceeded to zig/zag slowly down US400 toward I-44. (An aside. Whomever designed the I-44 section of interstate in NE OK is a moron. There's a solid concrete median with no 'legal' exit for about 15 miles. Knowing any tornado would have crossed the interstate in this area, I realized that there's no where for people to go in this scenario! A similar problem exists on I-70 between Bonner Springs and Lawrence. You only hope there's enough lead time for law enforcement to close the interstate ahead of the storm's path. I realize there's a toll issue at hand, but they really should rethink this. End soapbox).

Anywho, we headed down MO 43 and zig/zagged toward US71, with two clear observations. 1.) This storm had terrible HP structure and this tornado was certainly wrapped in rain/hail. 2.) The area we're driving through had been shredded by monster hail. Leaves and small limbs were everywhere over a very large swath. Golf ball to baseball hail stones lay in countless numbers in fields, yards, and piled along roadsides. Amazing stuff.

Came down Iris Rd and as we went to turn onto Highway 71 South, two cars were stopped at the entrance ramp with this lady yelling gibberish at us and pointing south. No precip and good visibility, so I'm obviously not going to drive into a tornado, so what are they yelling about? I should have asked... We got onto the highway and no more than a half mile south we witness a pretty horific scene. There were at least two separate multiple vehicle accidents surrounded on either side by devistation where it's clear we just missed a strong to violent tornado about 4NW of Neosho. It looked like someone had literally brushhogged all the trees, homes and vehicles. These people probably never saw it coming and on a Saturday afternoon, this highway is usually highly trafficked. I called SGF back and it's at that point I think we all realized something beyond the standard "tornado" report has just happened. Police and ambulences were quickly on scene, so we proceeded cautiously onward.

Trying to do a rough prelim assessment, we got off US60 which curves back around just NE of Neosho where we intercepted the tornado track again. This time, even worse. For those of you not familiar with this area, it's not only very hilly, but very forested. Trees were leveled in countless numbers NE of Neosho with many homes severly damaged and several homes (including brick) completely destroyed. We saw an 18 wheeler completely upside down with the wheels pointed skyward. The area from near Racine/Seneca...just north of Neosho to near Granby is pretty devistated and my good friend Brian Cross tells me the Oklahoma side is equally bad.

It's at this point that I feel pretty sick having made that wedding day analogy hours earlier, as I have personally not witnessed damage like this since the violent SE KS/SW MO tornadoes of 5/4/03. I spoke with my old MIC for about 10 minutes, discussing the details and severity of this. At this point we were not aware of any fatalities, but you knew it would have taken a miracle for there to be none. I offered my assistance in any way they needed. Let's face it, Mother's Day is every day in my house and its official recognition can certainly wait.

The only good news at that point is that the airmass east of our location had been greatly worked over by the initial elevated storms mentioned at the beginning of this long post. The storms rapidly become outflow dominant and weaken quickly as they exit Barry county to our east, and we begin the sullen trek home.

I want to publicly commend NWS ICT/SGF/TSA for very timely and detailed warnings, filled with very precise reports from the incredible efforts of the spotting/chasing/Emergency Management community. Although at least 17 are reported dead as of this morning, these great lead-time and detailed warnings undoubtedly saved countless lives. I say this because ahead of the storms, we witnessed hundreds of people outside doing typical Sat afternoon activities on a warm day. It could have been far far worse...

Evan

 

[mike scantlin]

We stayed ahead of the storm that fired near Wellington and decided to get on a storm that went up out ahead of this storm instead. The roads suck in this part of Kansas, but we did have a decent highway that ran E-W and we were only about 10 miles behind the storm so I figured we would catch it no problem. I was wrong. We could see the updraft base, but we just couldn't close the gap. We basically stayed about 10 miles behind the storm for an hour or so and then we hit a T in the highway and had to dive South farther. That was the straw that broke the camels back and the storms updraft base quickly moved out of sight. There was no catching back up after that so we called it a day.

sums up the "chase" part of my day. I was about 4 or 5 miles behind this tornado the entire time. Came into the damage path just E of Seneca, near the town of Racine. I would estimate EF3. I was among the first on the scene. most of the people had minor injuries, but there were 5 people who rode it out in a van. Luckily the were between hills, being right next to a small ridge, so in essence the worst jumped right over them, but a tree landed on the van, causing major cuts on the drivers head. All of the passengers were ok, just shaken up with some minor cuts and bruises. They needed a hospital and I had a SUV with a lightbar, so I picked 2 of them up and off we went. It was hard to find a route to Joplin, with all the powerlines down, but we got there in about 20 minutes. I dropped them off at Freeman Hospital, and went back to film damage for my station. Pretty horrendous. After about an hour of filming people cleaning up and all that, I went back to the hospital to check up on them. They were doing a catscan when I was there, and that's the last I heard.

All in all, a terrible day. Missed the tornado by minutes, and then the damage. My prayers go out to those effected. What a terrible day. But I guess it could have been worse.

 

[Matthew Fischer]

Left chicago around 3:30am drove all the way down to a rest stop by forest city to play the waiting game. Sat there for about 4 hours and got a few winks of sleep in. Then head to stuttgart to get south of the warm front...but we got there and was looking for food but they had no fast food! (Even though we had a gps and could have type that in...DOH!) So we left after a storm that was just north of the warm front and it was rotating and had a wall cloud on it but never produce. Got on this road (red oak ranch rd) that was the worst road i have seen ever. but it was the only east option we had or we would go north! So evenutally we finally get south to i-40, finally got data....3 tornadoic sups on radar...one behind us...or in front of us and one north east of us. So we race east on i-40 trying to catch the storm...we hit a major traffic jam by palestine, ar. Headed south on 261, road was flooded but we managed to get through it. We had heavy rain at the time but pushed foward! Got to us 79 and headed east to Marianna. Saw the radar had a nice hook on it but was about to cross the MS river so we booked south toward Helena take SR1 and then US 49 to get across the river. Made it across but decided to ditch that cell and go for the tor warn cell that was heading for Clarksdale, MS. Made to to Clarksdale and positioned us on US 49 and SR 6 looking north toward Clarksdale. Waited there and saw some lowerings but we were still in warm inflow so i knew the RFD hasn't passed yet so we were looking for a funnel that i thought i saw with a couple of lightning flashes. A few seconds later, a series of power flashes to our north and west in central area. We headed south to get away from it cause it had a southeastly course. Couldn't make contact with when the RFD came through and wiped us out. Stuck around Clarksdale saw some trees down and power out along with a big highway sign knocked over! Finally headed out of there since we were both tired and got to memphis around midnight or so.

But what a day. should have stayed in stuttgart but no food options that we knew of at the time!

 

[David Toner]

What a day yesterday was.

I started south out of Springfield, MO and got down to Ft. Smith in time to chase a pretty disorganized severe warned cell. After getting stuck in traffic in Ft. Smith I decided to reevaluate.

The warm front was not playing out the way I wanted so I decided to chance heading back towards southwest Mo. We got back to Joplin just as the tornado warning hit for Jasper and Newton. Not wanting to sit at 71 and 44 I opted to head south a bit.

Seemed that the storm kept extending southward or that it was making a right turn. Not really sure which. Set up at Iris Rd just east of 71 barely in time to catch what appeared a wall cloud with heavy rain to my west. Then caught a glimpse of a rope funnel in the rain shaft. Looking at the maps it would have been in the Racine area. I then made an attempt to turn back south on Gateway in time to get hit with baseball size hail. Pulled off into a parking lot that had a few of those metal carports for sale to wait out the hail. I was worried about the location of the tornado since I had lost track of it due to the heavy rain and hail.
Right after the hail stopped we took off south on Gateway Road in time to see debris in the air and again caught a brief glimpse of a stovepipe tornado as it headed east or east south east. Unfortunately that's where my chase ended as I couldn't get back on the storm due to all the trees and buildings in the road. We were about a quarter to a half mile north of the tornado when I sought refuge from the hail. Pretty scary when I think about that.

The path of devastation was a horrible way to end what otherwise would have been a great chase. My thoughts and prayers go out to the people affected by the storms.

 

[Tom DiMatteo]

Severe cell down in Austin

Went out yesterday evening and got the first sniff of anything severe in a LONG TIME for me. Pretty decent storm fired up around 7 pm and dropped alot of hail as it passed through SW Austin. I didn't see much lighning at all, even though there were reports of up to 4" hail from this storm. Anyway, nothing spectacular but it felt good see a storm! I think was
the southernmost cell in all of yesterdays activity.

http://www.pbase.com/tcdrushgeddy/severe_storms