Archive for January 29th, 2012

On Sunday, January 22, 2012, The Alabama Storm Trackers chased a system from Arkansas all the way back to our office in Talladega County, Alabama. For nearly 12 hours we were in “chase mode”. This is our summary of that day.

We departed the office at roughly 6AM Central Time en route to Arkansas. The Storm Prediction Center had upgraded our target area from a SLGT Risk to a MDT Risk for severe thunderstorms.

For most of the morning, we had fun just joking with each other and talking with the viewers on our stream at LivestormsNOW. We picked up our other rider for the day in Oxford, MS where we stopped for breakfast. We then proceeded west on US278 toward the Mississippi River with an initial target of Helena, AR. After doing some analysis on the way, we decided that crossing into Southeast Arkansas would be the better play. We crossed the Mississippi River from Greenville, MS where we met up with some other chasers. Here, we’d wait for initiation. We ate lunch while watching what we later realized to be a gravity wave passing over us.

After some further analysis, we decided to cross back into Mississippi. During this time, storms started erupting in East-Central Arkansas and immediately began to rotate. We blasted north on State Road 1 to Helena and crossed the river. Damage reports were beginning to come out of Fordyce and Rison from a storm that had a very impressive couplet. We targeted DeWitt in Arkansas County for an intercept. We chased this area before back on May 1 2010 so we knew the road network fairly well.

We went a couple miles south of DeWitt and watched the lightning show the storm was putting on to our West. We then noticed the storm took somewhat of a left turn so we shot back north to US165 where numerous other chasers were waiting on the storm. It was when we arrived here that we observed some power flashes immediately in front of us:

This is what radar and storm relative velocity looked like at the moment of this video:

We started making our way back to the east as the storms moved off to our north and northeast and began to weaken. We came across damage in West Helena, AR of a tractor trailer that had been rolled with trees snapped and some outbuildings damaged:

After stopping to capture the above footage, we started making our way back toward Oxford. We encountered some hail with the cells that were along the squall line as big as golfballs at times.

We weren’t aware until later, however, that roughly 10 minutes after we turned onto US278 a tornado did damage in Quitman County, Mississippi. Based on the winds we drove through, I’m almost positive that we drove straight through the circulation before it fully matured.

Once we dropped our rider off in Oxford, we surged east through the squall line one final time on the road back to Alabama. Cells had fired ahead of the main convection and were getting tornado-warned fairly rapidly. Brett got some sleep during the downtime while I dodged some disorganized storms. I noticed on radar that a storm was about to enter Pickens County, AL and it had some decent rotation on radar. As we crossed the state line, the National Weather Service in Birmingham issued a Tornado Warning for that storm. Brett woke up and we decided that we’d continue on our normal route and intercept near Forestdale in western Jefferson County.

Damage reports started coming out of Tuscaloosa County near Lake Tuscaloosa as the storm continued to look better on radar. Here is a capture from when it was near Lake Tuscaloosa:

At that time we were directly north of the storm on US78 passing near Jasper. We got ahead of it and dropped south on Arkadelphia Road in Forestdale just WNW of Birmingham and waited for it to come to us.

The storm cycled as it passed over our location, then immediately began producing another tornado north of downtown Birmingham in the Gardendale area. This is where the tornado began to strengthen as it headed toward the cities of Clay, Trussville, and Argo.

The storm eventually out-ran us, but proceeded down I59 toward Gadsden until we reached the Argo exit where we crossed the damage path. We were hearing reports on the SKYWARN HAM Radio Channel of entrapments and significant damage in Clay and the Georgia Manor neighborhood of Trussville off Deerfoot Parkway. I immediately had to check on my best friend’s house. They had tree damage and some minor roof damage, but came out lucky compared to two blocks away. Once we left there, we noted two more cells to our south that were taking aim at Brett’s house. Luckily they weakened greatly before getting near there.

We ended the chase after 25 hours on the road and logging just under 1,100 miles. Our thoughts are with those affected by these storms.

There were two fatalities from the Tuscaloosa/Jefferson/St. Claire tornado. One occurred near Oak Grove and one near Clay. It should be noted that the lead time for these storms was incredible. The Birmingham office of the National Weather Service did an outstanding job in getting these warnings issued. This tornado impacted a few locations that saw damage from the EF-4 on April 27, 2011. Below is WBRC FOX6′s wall-to-wall coverage of the tornado as it was moving from Northern Tuscaloosa County all the way through Argo. You’ll hear Chief Meteorologist James Paul Dice on the phone LIVE with Brett at the 56:25 mark and again at the 2:11:00 mark in the video.

We will continue to be in the field for the remainder of the year providing intense footage and even touring opportunities. Contact brett@livestormsnow.com for details concerning touring.

We were featured on every major network with the two videos you saw above in Arkansas. Special thanks to Kendra Reed of KDR Media for helping us out with that.

Never stop chasing.