Chasing in Dixie Alley

[Kevin Myatt]

Take a look at this map: Mississippi Embayment. It clearly shows the area that others have mentioned, from the bootheel south and southwest along and either side of the Mississippi River to northeast Louisiana. Aside from storm mode (which most often isn't as ideal as out west), it's a great place to chase. Of course, there are always exceptions to storm mode .

Oh to have been on that exception ... I usually go visit my parents at Jonesboro one or two weekends in the spring, and I almost picked the weekend that included April 3, 2006, when the long-lived Marmaduke-Caruthersville tornadic supercell occurred ... I could have driven north 20 miles and intercepted this tornado in open terrain and then possibly intercepted again in the Bootheel ... from the video/photos I've seen, mostly from residents and by-chance travelers, it would have been an amazing catch comparable to the best in the Plains ... we took our college/high school chase team through Caruthersville a month after it happened, and the damage scene gave them a real learning experience about what living in tornado country can be like ...

 

[Brett Adair]

When you chase Dixie Alley in every event like I do, you get used to the terrain. You eventually learn to remember the great spots that you have found before and new spots for a visual that you come upon. When you are a hardcore chaser....you will chase anywhere; anytime. As far as storms moving at 50kts, those are the only ones I chase! What fun is a 15kt moving supercell......those are easy!

Dixie Alley is certainly dangerous chase territory because of our high frequency of dangerous night time tornadoes. Not to mention, our climatologically favored low LCL's due to the bath tub to our south. E AR/W MS is some of the best chase territory around from the visual aspect, but it's also great to watch it become a river during training supercells.

Anyway, it's always a challenge chasing in the southeast. Trees and powerflashes can become your best friend in the forest. The NWS does appreciate damage verification even though they don't really advise storm chasing in the south.

 

[mikedeason]

After moving back to Alabama in April 2006, I resigned myself to the fact that my chase days were probably over for at least a few years until I could get back out on the Plains in spring time. However, you've got to scratch the itch when it's bad enough and I have chased a few times down here over the past several years.

I really can't add much than has already been said, especially concerning the hills, trees and road networks. But if you'll willing to work at it and be patient, you can successfully chase here in the Southeast. So here's a few pics from a couple of chases over the past few years to give everyone a graphic idea of what you're facing while chasing (no rhyme intended) in the Heart of Dixie Alley.

The first seven images were taken on September 22, 2006. Several tornadoes struck Jefferson and Blount Counties, Alabama causing F2 damage and several injuries:

This is the supercell looking west from about 25 miles away. Not very impressive.

I drove west to Birmingham and them up US31 north to capture this wall cloud as it move just north of Gardendale.

This image and the next two demonstrate what can make chasing down here pretty frustrating at times. In this image, there was very good rotation going on with cloud tags being pulled vertically from near the surface rapidly. Was it a tornado? I called it no, just a low hanging wall cloud...

What's hiding behind the trees?

And the view doesn't get better here. Now some of you may have written this off as nothing more than junk at this point. But, lo and behold, I drive eastward for another mile or two and...

A decent wall cloud with a tornado (on the right side of the wall cloud, it was the dying Locust Fork F2) which several minutes later produced...

...the F2 Oneonta Tornado.

The next three images represent a minisupercell chase from this past August when the remnants of TS Faye passed through the area.

This is a view of a minisupe near Jasper, AL The view is to the west and the storm is moving northwest. Quite surprisingly, I was able to keep up with it!

This is near Nauvoo, AL and once again, is it a tornado? I couldn't tell conclusively so I said no. As in one of the earlier pics, it could have been a very low hanging wall cloud. However, notice the tornado magnet in the foreground.

And finally, a funnel cloud near Lynn, AL.

Hopefully, some of these images give you an idea of what chasing can be like down here in Dixie Alley.

 

[Paul Austin]

Nice pics, Mike. You should come down here to the "jungle". There aren't too many areas in my neck of the woods as open as those in your pics. You have to know where they are ahead of time. There's one such area just south of where I live called Payne's Prairie, but it is only a few miles in breadth from north to south. The view east to west is perfectly open, and north to south is mostly open, but you can only view storms as they approach and leave. There are no E/W roads through the prairie, and north is Gainesville proper, south is "jungle". You only benefit from this view if a storm tracks across this area.

Here's a sat view from GoogleMaps:

You can see all of 2 miles of I75 or US441 passes through. This is usually a prairie, but occasionally fills with water to become a large shallow lake. And this is some of the best viewing anywhere near where I live.

I usually opt to chase up into GA if a setup offers that option.

 

[Dave Gallaher]

Nice images there, Mike--I love the mini-supes around here, and at times they pop up without much fanfare from forecasters. I've been surprised by a few.

Speaking of surprises, I was driving to a gig this afternoon in Winfield, AL (Hamilton County). I didn't think about the weather after reading the 'see text' on SWODY 1. But as we drove across western Winston County, visual conditions became very intriguing in between small very intense rain showers. At one point, driving west on US278 between Double Springs and Natural Bridge, we encountered a very dark flat rain-free base with a sharply defined wedge-shaped lowering. We could only view it sporadically between valleys and trees, but it held its shape pretty well as it disappeared to the northeast. Now I grant that this is probably a classic sheriffnado scudbomb, but the darkness of the updraft area was certainly interesting. Several points we saw today had these VERY black clouds. I reference all cloud blackness to the updraft of the 1989 Huntsville F-4 that I saw (briefly) from about three miles north; this is still the blackest cloud I've ever witnessed.

I've emailed Andy at NWS HSV to ask what the velocity scans were like in that area at that time. Someone who came to our show said there had been tor-warnings south of there.

Brett makes some great points, by the way.

EDIT: Andy Kula has emailed reflectivity/velocity archive from that time and location; the intense rain shows well, but there's only minute rotational markers, if at all, so we must have been viewing straight updrafts. Andy indicated in his email that all those storms had inflow notches on them, so inflow was significant. I would attach the radars here, but the file is a .png, and my computer won't store it.