Radar capture of Plumerville, AR Tornado

[Matt Haworth]

To quote Dave Lewison, "Jason Politte was on the east side of Morrilton AR. He was headed west to take a better look at what looked like power flashes when the inflow picked up rapidly from the south with wrapping rain curtains. He turned it around real quick and blasted east!! West side of Morrilton may have been hit by this thing if those were indeed power flashes that he saw. I'd believe it with those gate-to-gate velocities on the SR data."

http://weather.xonelabs.com/0.5%20REF%20AK.png (Base Reflectivity)

http://weather.xonelabs.com/AK%20SRM.png (SRM)

 

[Karen Politte]

Thanks for posting this thread - I will promptly hijack it LOL. Well not really......but you know.

Here is the Morrilton BWER:

Here is the Morrilton reflectivity:

Morrilton reflectivity 2:

Morrilton velocity :shock: :

A very scary night indeed. I am glad Jason made it home OK. He said he had power go out around him during this event, and saw power flashes. But then it all starts sounding like my May 9th OKC escapade and I stop listening....... :?

I will keep these images up on my URL for a few days but it'll drain my bandwidth so I will have to pull them eventually - anybody who wants to save them from there before I wipe them is obviously welcome to do so.

By the looks of things the south and east sides of Morrilton may have taken a direct hit. I don't have television to watch news reports from today as the 60mph+ dust storm here in OUN knocked our satellite dish off course.

KR

 

[Karen Politte]

To elaborate.....

Obviously we use GRLevel3 for our radar and nowcasting.

Earlier this year, while kind of nowcasting for Gene and Tim when they were out and about, I got into the habit of "anticipating" where a day's activity would end up being, and gong to the ESRI Shapefiles download site and downloading the state counties I forecasted I would need.

Hence - by the time these storms were rolling, I had the roads shapefiles downloaded and applied on Fort Smith's radar on GRLevel3. I can't take credit for the great shapefiles you can apply to that radar program - they are just awesome.

But - I seem to have those few images above there that are worth keeping - as they were saved at an appropriate zoom level and show all the roads/grids. I'm happy that this interests some out there. Especially for Jason - who is now home safe and sound and looking over my saved material - and correlating it with his intense evening chase.

KR