Archive for March, 2010

Numerous severe thunderstorm warnings are out and have been issued all evening in association with the squall line just west of the Mississippi River. A few showers and thunderstorms are starting to show up near the Alabama-Mississippi state line, small hail and some strong winds are all that is to be expected with the showers and storms over night tonight in Alabama.

Well I had an interesting day chasing myself. Although I did not score as Brett did my funnels never touched down as the one below in Iuka Mississippi( no warning ever issued) it lowered  and I thought it was going to touch as it passed about 1/4 mile to my east. Very surreal and beautiful and I got to chase with my wife(she was freaking out)

Iuka Mississippi

Those are just some of the awesome storms we were able to intercept today! Golfball hail video and the video of the storm that produced the Alabaster tornado coming tomorrow evening! Have a great evening.

This evening we have began looking at a few prospects for the potential for a couple of severe storms on Thursday afternoon across portions of the state…..particularly west of I-65.  The factors are not very impressive at this point, but if more low level moisture can become established ahead of the cold front we might deal with a few issues.  To the maps….

This map is valid at 7PM on Friday evening.  You can see the main shear is exiting the area ahead of the cold front where some surface based instability has developed along the Alabama/Mississippi state line.  This is due to a tongue of 60° dewpoints that try to nose northward ahead of the cold frontal boundary from about Reform to Tuscaloosa on southward. 

This chart notes where the best low level moisture corresponds with the cooler temps aloft advecting in ahead of the upper trof axis.  0-3KM CAPE values in excess of 200+ J/kg are considered very high.  This would lead me to believe that we could have some surface based storm development into Thursday evening.  Given the ejecting shear I believe that we could have a couple of supercells with the potential for damaging winds and large hail along with some developing line segments along the frontal boundary.  Surface flow will veer ahead of the front really killing low level shear values.  However, if the shear lags behind what is currently projected we could deal with a couple of tornadoes.  We will need to monitor low level moisture closely….because any increase would allow for higher instability values over a larger area and potentially lead to a more enhanced threat of severe storms. 

The Storm Prediction Center in Norman has outlined much of Mississippi, West Alabama, and West Tennessee in a Slight Risk of severe storms for Thursday.  Stay tuned for further updates on this impending situation.  We will be changing the chase status to slight at this time.

Video from our Oklahoma Snow Chase this past weekend. This video was taken from Broken Arrow and Salisaw, Oklahoma.

The Alabama Storm Trackers and Twisted Tours guest Brandon Thomas intercepted the snow storm across sections of Oklahoma on Saturday and Early Sunday morning.  This compact and very deep upper level low developed a deformation band across portions of East and Central Oklahoma last evening and dropped some significant amounts along the I-40 corridor.  Here are a few photos from our trek.  We have more video and photos that we will be posting in the next several days.

This storm has unofficially allow Oklahoma City and many portions of Western Arkansas set the records for their snowiest winter.  It was a truely beautiful scene.  If you are interested in these kind of tours (Winter Weather, Severe Storms, Hurricanes) contact us on the Twisted Tours link at the top of the blog!

Here is video shot from the Alabama Storm Trackers this afternoon by David Neal at the intersection of North Blvd. and I-65 in Montgomery. We witnessed this storm produce rapid rotation as the storm occluded and a new updraft formed to the north of us.