April 30th took me to southwest Missouri for what ended up being a High Risk day from SPC. All the ingredients were coming together for a tornado outbreak in Missouri and Arkansas. We targeted a pinch point in the boundary that occurred near Muskogee, Oklahoma. Storms kept firing in that location and then raced north into colder rain cooled air in southwest Missouri. Finally, one storm was able to right turn and not race into the colder air. This storm produced several confirmed tornadoes in northwest Arkansas and southwest Missouri as it pulled the boundary into it. We intercepted two of those tornadoes. If you have never chased in the Ozarks before, it is a very difficult task. With storm motion at 50 MPH, we were on curvy, winding, hilly roads that you could not drive over about 40 mph safely on. Thus as the storm passed us we could never catch it again. Below are a few pics and also a video I shot. Still it was an exciting successful chase!
April 29, 2010 Washington, Kansas Tornadic Supercell
April 29th took us to central/northern Kansas to play a boundary. Moisture was not optimal that day, but lift and shear were great. A supercell formed southwest of Cuba, Kansas and looked pretty respectable. It had a decent non-rotating wall cloud for a long time. Finally as it moved north of Washington, a new lowering started spinning rapidly, eventually putting down a brief tornado as it came directly overhead blasting us with strong WARM RFD winds. The wall cloud passed directly overhead giving us a moment of intensity hoping it would not drop a tornado until it passed us. It was on the ground off and on for about 3 minutes before dissipating.
Check out this video time lapse:
April 22, 2010 Texas Panhandle Tornadoes
April 22nd was a day that had high hopes. A very deep trough moving in the southwestern states created strong southwest flow aloft with good diffluence. A dryline set up over the central Texas panhandle. By late afternoon storms exploded along the dryline just south of Clarendon, Texas and moved north. As they approached the interstate 40 corridor, they produced several tornadoes. I broke the 2010 season in with a bang, catching 5 tornadoes from two supercells.