On 4/24/10 we were all over the Yazoo City EF-4 tornado, but the road network combined with a lot of trees and the HP nature of the supercell made it impossible to see from our vantage point! Again, we just saw a huge black mass go across the road! On 4/30/10 we were on a tornadic supercell that dropped a tornado about 7-8 miles WNW of our position... By the time it got to where we were, precipitation formed out in from of the supercell and cut the inflow off, killing the tornado before it got our location! On 5/1/10 we were on the southern supercell that eventually rolled through Memphis later in the night... Again it was so tough to get any visibility into the supercell... We finally found one ok/decent spot but it only allowed us about 3-4 minutes of viewing before the storm passed... It produced a nice rapidly developing wall cloud, but again no tornado! While I have seen many tornadoes in the Deep South over the years, it's so much harder than chasing in the Great Plains! Like I said last night it really does make you appreciate the near perfect conditions you typically find in the Plains! Well maybe I shouldn't say perfect, but it sure feels that way compared to the Deep South!
4/30/10 - Michael Carter, Tim Wallace, and myself started the day in Starkville, MS... We first attended a banquet celebrating our back to back national championships in forecasting! It's a great honor for our department/university so again we all really wanted to attend... At about 2pm we got on the road and headed towards Memphis... The SPC updated to a moderate 15% hatched tornado from the slight 10% it had earlier in the day... Once past Memphis we decided to head towards Brinkley, AR which is about 70 miles east of Little Rock on I-40... We quickly stopped at a Days Inn and looked at some data... At first we decided to make a run at the more northern convection, but not too long into the drive north and west I started to notice development south and west of Little Rock ( I was running the radar from the back seat)... So we turned around and headed towards the town of Lonoke, AR, which is about 20 miles of so east of Little Rock...
When we got to Lonoke, AR after dark (about 9pm) the SPC had upped the risk to high with 30% tornado... There was a beast of a supercell heading in our general direction with a report of a tornado about 7 miles or so away... This thing was turning hard right and basically towards Lonoke... I quickly warned some people in a gas station we were stopped at and headed just a little east and north... You could see the base of this storm, but like I have previously stated the tornado had lifted by this time as precipitation developing out in front cut off the inflow... We continued to chased this storm towards a town called Hickory Plains, AR... Just west of Hickory Plains the inflow really picked up as the this supercell almost dropped another tornado right in front of us... It was so hard to see due to trees and it being nighttime (could see a bass lowering), but there was a nice wall cloud a mile tops in front of us (which we honestly couldn't see/tell until we reviewed the video)... Again though, no tornado dropped and we continued to try to chase until nearly midnight, when we decided to stop as most everything was becoming linear quickly! We got some McDonald's and then got a hotel back in Brinkley for the steal price of $42.55...
5/1/10 - We woke up around 9am and got on the road around 9:30am... We decided to play the best environment in the southeastern Arkansas Delta even though the CAP was fairly strong (9 C at 700mb)... Even with the strong CAP I always rather play the best environment as long as the CAP is not unbreakable! So we targeted Hamburg, AR and started making our way south and east... On the way down we noticed CAPE values pushing 3500 J/kg, however the 0-1 shear was lacking big time! I figured as the surface low got going in southwestern Arkansas the winds would back at the surface increasing the low level shear... Also, the low level jet was forecasted to be much stronger in the southern portion of the state so again I felt good with our forecast!
I know I quickly touched on this yesterday, but I was surprised with the high risk 30% tornado! The SPC does a fantastic job but I really feel because of what happened last Saturday in Mississippi they are being extra cautious.... Not saying there is anything wrong with that at all, but again I was just a little surprised at the back to back high risks... Personally I feel those should only be issued if you feel all hell is going to break loose... Plus Moderate 15% tornado is still a strong risk which I personally feel gets the point across very well... They are the best at what they do, and I only point this out to avoid desensitizing the public over time...
Once we got to Hamburg, AR we headed a little more east on 82 towards a small town called Montrose... This was a great experience for me personally! The people of this town were absolutely great and they really were unbelievably nice to us... We met a lot of great people and again I thank them so much for their hospitality! Small towns like Montrose, AR is what America is all about IMO... We met two future storm chasers named Tyler Jones and Selby Moreau... It was great talking to these two kids and they showed us around a little... Tyler's father owned a BBQ place named Sassy Jones BBQ... They don't cook the BBQ anymore, but they still sell all sorts of sauces and spice rubs... I bought some steak sauce, BBQ sauce, and also some rib rub which I really look forward to using here very soon... It was fun to get to experience a little of old town USA!
We also really enjoyed hanging out in a great spot called Bo's Deli... A very nice girl named Kaitlyn Graham was trying to give us free food and again was just being so nice to us... If anyone is ever in Montrose, AR, I highly recommend eating there... I know Tim got a BBQ sandwich which he told me was very good... Before we left to chase we showed them some of the things we look at as chasers and just tried to exposed them to meteorology in general... I think they really enjoyed that and I hope we were able to help them learn a few things... One of the biggest questions we got is what does PDS mean??? Of course we explained it to them, but it just goes to show that we need to communicate better as meteorologist! What good does a PDS (Particularly Dangerous Situation) tornado watch do, if the majority of the general public doesn't even understand what it means? Education combined with communication is the key to safer practices during severe weather, hurricanes, snow storms, etc, etc, etc... I'm just so thankfully Montrose stayed safe on Saturday... Of course we warned them, without scaring them the best we could, but still I would have felt horrible if something bad would have happened... Thank God that didn't happen!!!
Around 5pm we noticed convection starting to fire about 50-60 miles SW of us along I-20 in Louisiana... We said our goodbyes and heading a little west and north towards Hermitage, AR... Once we got close there was a tornado warned storm heading just west near a town called Jersey... As we got close to Jersey it became painfully obvious that we weren't going to see much... There were trees everywhere and our visibility was absolutely horrible... Thankfully we found a decent viewing spot down some random road... From there we got a great view into a rapidly developing wall cloud less than a mile in front of us... I got some great video of the wall cloud, but it never dropped a tornado! It was such a beautiful supercell and honestly we got SO LUCKY to see it as well as we did... Once the supercell passed we were playing catch up the entire afternoon... The road network in Arkansas is not the best so once a supercell passes, it's basically impossible to get back on it unless you go 100mph, which of course we didn't...
We followed this tornado warned storm the best we could until we got to Star City, AR... At that point there was no way we could even stay fairly close, so we broke off and tried to get on another tornado warned storm near England, AR... The boundary was riding mostly west to east just south of Little Rock and pretty close to where we were in England... The storm continued to look worse and worse (weakening worse) as it crossed the boundary, but we still follow it north to a town called Cabot which is about 10-15 miles north of I-40... It was completely outflow dominate at this point, but it was still cool to watch... However, we decided to call it a night after this storm... We stopped at an Outback steakhouse for dinner (very good) and then headed back to Brinkley to stay at the same $42.55 hotel...
I always learn so much storm chasing every time I go out, and I don't consider these two days busts at all... We nailed our forecast but luck wasn't on our side... I have said this many times over the years, but in storm chasing "You win some, and lose most"! That's just the way it is, and honestly it only makes me even more hungry for the next chase... Again, I'm proud of our forecasting and I can't wait to get a chance to storm chase in the Great Plains! Of course it depends on a lot of factors but I'm planning on heading out Thursday/Friday... It's looking like the Gulf of Mexico will open back up as a couple of nice troughs swings in from the Pacific! We should have at least 3 if not 4 good chase days from about May 9th - May 12th... I would guess things should slow down a little with a positive SOI and a negative NAO, probably slowing things down by about a day, and hopefully giving us one extra chase day overall... Either way it looks good for a few days and then things should close back down after that... I hope the long range models are wrong because it looks pretty bad for at least a solid week + after this 3 to 4 day event... I do think things will really start going crazy towards the latter part of May! When you follow the pattern like I do year round, it's really like the atmosphere thinks were about a month behind schedule! Time will tell though...
No comments:
Post a Comment