Tag Archives | Arkansas

April 2-4 Arkansas, Tennessee and Texas Tornado Warned Supercells

We ran an on call storm chasing tour in TN/AR/TX during the April 2-4 period. We caught numerous tornado warned supercells, however on the Lake City, AR day (4/2), we debated whether to play west of the MS river or east. (Very few crossings!) Parameters were pretty sweet. We ultimately chose east (ugh) due to several discrete cells and at that time nothing west of the river. Sooo, no tornado for us! Chased a half dozen tor warned storms, but nothing produced in TN, till after midnight of course.
Second day we chased southwest AR/NW LA. Storms formed southwest of us (Ida, LA) and became tor warned. As they approached and crossed the front into wet, cool, stratus filled skies that was the end. Elevated for certain.
Last day (4./4), after spending the night in Texarkana, we stayed close. We were torn between the ne TX play or venturing up towards Little Rock as models were producing isolated supercells ahead of the front. We started towards Little Rock (Thinking of the Lake City event and hoping for Part 2!) and turned back around as several supercells emerged out of junky clusters in northeast Texas. We managed to catch one tornadic supercell between Texarkana and Douglassville, TX. A couple tornado reports came across, but appeared to be buried back in the Rear flank core around the hook. We found a spot by a lake as the storm approached. It was INSANELY electrified. You could see a VERY low wall cloud (possible messy circulation?) that persisted for many minutes before CGs hitting on the other side of us ran us back in to the van.
Fun trip, a bit disappointing that we didn’t catch the Lake City tornado, but you have to make choices and with several developing supercells east of the river, there was no way we were staying west. Even SPC’s MD hit western TN the hardest. Funny thing, we actually drove through Jonesboro and Lake City coming down from Springfield, MO that day. Ironic as can be…….

May 2nd, 2008 Arkansas and Mississippi Tornadic Supercells

May 2nd had big potential. But, when we awoke in Joplin, Missouri, a huge squall line had moved through, taking the instability and moisture with it. I was afraid the squall line would be all that formed that day. Despite great kinematics and good thermodynamics, I figured the day would be spoiled by this raging squall line. I couldn’t have been more wrong. We blasted east and south through southern Missouri and northern Arkansas to my target northwest of Memphis. As we did, it became apparent that this day would go down as a major event. The squall line became cellular with numerous tornado warned, long lived tornadic supercells forming from Little Rock, AR eastward and southeastward through western Tennessee and western Mississippi. We intercept numerous tornado warned superells and filmed 3 tornadoes, one very close near Gilmore, Arkansas. Early evening found us farther into Mississippi than I have chased, while intercepting two significant tornadic supercells, both near New Albany, MS.

Our first tornado occurred just north of Marked Tree, Arkansas, and was a short lived multivortex tornado. The second tornado was a rather large, strong cone tornado near West Ridge, Arkansas that unfortunately caused considerable damage to many farmsteads. The closest tornado that we caught was near Gilmore, AR as a tornadic supercell approached our location from the southwest. The tornado passed only a few hundred yards from our location. Unfortunately, in the heat of navigating our group, I was not able to get my digital camera out until we intercepted the supercells near New Albany, MS. Thu all the tornado photographs are video stills.

Our final excitement came as we tried to punch the hook of a tornadic supercell just north of New Albany. I stopped us about two miles north of the tornado as radar was showing over 140 kts of shear in the circulation. This could have been disastrous had we continued on the highway. The final supercell had structure like I had never seen before in east of the Mississippi river! As it passed into New Albany, the RFD ripped up trees and downed power lines, as a rain wrapped tornado churned just north of town. Please click on the thumbnail image for a larger image.

Sign up for storm alerts straight to your inbox!