Archive for the ‘Tornadoes’ Category

Portions of SW Alabama have been placed under a tornado watch until 3AM CST.  This watch only includes far western border counties this evening.  Thunderstorms are erupting along the front and ahead of it from the Shreveport, LA area eastward.  This is expected to continue overnight and the threat of tornadic action is expected to increase with time. 

A very heavy rain mass is moving across portions of Mississippi and Alabama this evening and will likely cause some localized flooding troubles throughout the evening.  We are watching the warm front closely to the south and will likely be chasing if things become unstable across south-central portions of our area by morning.  We will be updating throughout the night time hours as conditions warrant.  Go over your tornado plan if you are in the watch area. 

Looking at our radar here….we have highlighted a cell that has been tornado warned for the last little big that has had some rotation and potential for producing tornadoes.  funnel clouds have been reported and we have been watching this thing for a little while now.  Some tree and line damage has been reported around the Raleigh area this afternoon.  Nothing as serious as the damage and injuries from yesterdays convection in Louisiana. 

Our next potential weather maker will get going Tuesday into Wednesday around here.  Looks like another minimal risk of severe storms, but the heavy rain threat looks to be pretty significant.  We will continue to watch and post more on our chances as we approach the Wednesday time frame.

Here is radar of the tornado rated EF-0 near Crowley, LA where some structures were damaged.  This tornado was very weak and short lived but did produce about 3 injuries.

This shot is the second and stronger tornado that occurred in Rayne, LA on the NW side of town.  Estimates are that 60 homes have been completely destroyed and at least 50 injuries have been observed with some serious.  One person has been confirmed dead with unconfirmed reports of more.  Gas leaks have been reported and officials have been unable to get into some of the damaged areas due to debris and the threat of gas leaking.  Much of Rayne has been evacuated due to these threats.  This was one serious beat on radar a little earlier this morning. 

Thankfully, we won’t deal with anything like this across Alabama today.  Most of the rainfall will be out of here by late tonight and the front will move through North and Central Alabama calmly.  A tornado watch is in effect along the AL/FL Gulf Coast until 10PM this evening for the threat of an isolated tornado down that way.  Instability is much less than it was in Louisiana earlier….so the threat of major tornadoes has greatly diminished.

On Monday 2/28/11 we departed our central Alabama location at 3am en route to North Alabama for what looked to be a good chase day.  Early on we were cranking up the tunes while driving north bound and entertaining our guests on our StormScapeLIVE stream.  By 5am we were in the Decatur area and decided to exit off and have a good bite to eat with John Brown and Mike Wilhelm at the local Waffle House.  After grabbing a bite to eat we noticed that cells began going up right behind a gravity wave that was traversing north Mississippi and decided to fuel up and head NW. 

We progressed toward the Florence vicinity and noticed a distinct NE component to the storms.  Once we passed Waterloo, AL we observed lighting and some light rain but no real evidence of severe weather.  Thus, we backed off and went back into Florence and waited for later action.  After watching another storm weaken and go to our north from there we decided to head back to the interstate and make a play on later storms that were scheduled to form.  Just before noon storms began going to severe in Western Lauderdale and Colbert County.  We strategized and decided to go northward toward Athens and take the exit and drive in the direction of Rogersville just across the river and into Lauderdale county.  We noticed some evidence of rotation along Us-72 and took SR-207 northward to follow the developing storm.  Once we made it to Anderson the storm accelerated to our east and we were unable to really catch it.   After taking SR-99 eastward back towards Athens….we pulled over in the Cartwright community as we heard some kind of a roar with the cell departing to our ENE.  Inflow winds were picking up into the cell as it really ramped up in forward speed and entered Limestone County.  This storm went on to produce a tornado near the state line north of Hazel Green just east of HWY-231. 

After being bummed about missing a tornadic producing cell….we went back to I-65 to catch up with cells that were beginning to fire to the SW along the pre-frontal convergence.  After getting back on I-65 southward we noted that the cells were beginning to develop a little rotation even with the mainly veered low level winds at the surface.  We punched through a cell that had probably 5”/hour rainfall rates and got into position as a “kidney bean” shaped cell approached us at the rest area just south of Good Hope in Cullman County.  Once we got into position and at an elevated location we witnessed this at the beginning of the video.

This funnel was pretty consolidated for a few moments and actually extended probably 1/2 or 3/4 of the way to the ground at times.  Some folks on our stream thought they witnessed a touch down, but we can’t find any video evidence that would suggest that at all.  This was really the best cell that we caught on this day.

After intercepting the Cullman cell….we tracked south to the I-20/59 interchange and headed west.  This was a bad move on our part and put us too far north to get into the significant wind/hail that impacted parts of the Birmingham metro.  We got off at US-78 which mainly received heavy rain from the cell.

We sat there for a few moments in traffic gridlock and finally made it back to I-65 south bound heading toward the cells in Jefferson/Shelby.  We finally came out of the embedded rainfall while listening to all of the traffic on the 146.88 repeater out of Birmingham.  The reports of golf ball to tennis ball sized hail were pouring in and we figured that we may get lucky and get some rotation in the updraft base on the south side.  Once we got out of the core, we saw some rotation around the Shelby County airport.  We figured it was our last play of the day and decided to take the HWY-25 exit toward Columbiana/Wilsonville.  We saw a disorganized wall cloud a few times along the way with some higher base rotation, but the main show was further east with the Harpersville cell as a tornado warning was issued with damage being reported. 

We were unable to catch the cell, so we followed the rotational path of the cell that impacted Shelby/Talladega county and found the tornado damage located at the end of our video above.  The damage as all mainly minor, but looked like this on radar.

With veering winds throughout the event, you can’t ask for a much better day.  Instability was able to get storms fueled as the cap broke and the convergence kept them coming through the afternoon.  Had the winds stayed back…. a high end tornado outbreak would have unfolded.  Keep in mind that this is early spring and we still have a ways to go.

I have a feeling this time tomorrow evening I will probably be sick for not making the trip out to Arkansas, but this is our tornado target product for tomorrow.  This is where we believe the highest potential for a strong, long tracked tornado may be during the afternoon and evening hours across portions of AR/LA/W MS/W TN.  There is definitely some parameters that are coming together for this to be a pretty damaging event.  If something changes and we hit the road, we will let you know first.

Our current high resolution radar shows some lighter showers spreading into the area this hour with the bulk of the rainfall staying south of I-20 where it has remained most of the day.  It looks like some showery activity can be expected for the rest of the night across most of the area with the heaviest rainfall staying to the south.  This will begin to taper off during the day on Monday and give way to mostly cloudy skies.

The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma has issued there latest day 2 convective outlook for Tuesday.  The threat has expanded some to the west and they mention higher instability values potentially being present as temperatures are a big warmer on current model runs for the Mississippi area.  There is now mention of rotating storms with a highly sheared low level environment and the potential for a couple of super cell thunderstorms across LA/MS during this time.  We are going to upgrade our chase status to MODERATE for the likelihood of chasing across the Jackson metro area on Tuesday.  Continue to monitor the blog concerning this as things may change before Tuesday.

Now….we won’t talk much about it but the models are starting to pick up on something pretty big for the weekend.  This is the Canadian model that has performed pretty good in the longer range this winter….and it shows some Winter mischief across Mississippi and Alabama in the form of ice and snow on Saturday.  We will fine tune things before then, but the idea is definitely on the table.

Supercells are now becoming a problem in the Jackson forecast area.  These two tornado warned storms are just southwest of Jackson.  Nothing has been reported on the ground with damage at this moment, but these cells are exhibiting strong rotation. 

Tornado watches are in effect for virtually the entire state of Mississippi throughout the evening into the overnight.  Stay aware of the weather situation as this activity could spread into west Alabama…..especially west of I-65 during the overnight hours.  More to come…

I don’t like to hear of fatalities when I get up in the morning…..and we already have three in the small community of Cincinnati in Washington County, AR from and early morning tornado that has destroyed at least one brick home and several structures.  Tornado watches and warnings continue to be in effect for portions of Northern Arkansas and Southern Missouri at this hour.

These storms intensified rapidly as they pushed across the OK/AR state line this morning into the warm, juicy flow of air coming northward out of the Gulf of Mexico.  There is more potential for such an event to unfold further east today.

The 12z sounding from Jackson, MS indicates a loaded gun type setup with quite the inversion around the 775mb level of the atmosphere.  This dry air aloft will likely aid in developing potential instability that could be unleashed if this cap breaks.  Given the incredible shear values…. it is likely that storms/showers will spin from the near the onset ahead of a massive mid level trough that will shoot northeast later in the period.

Our in-house mesoscale WRF model indicates that the capping should be broken shortly after noon with convection firing across most of Mississippi and potentially into west Alabama.  Shear values will be supportive of super cell structures with the potential for tornadoes.  This is a developing situation and one that we will possible deploy on for a chase within the next hour or so.  Stay tuned for more updates regarding this potential.

Storms are really going now and tornado watches are up to the Alabama state line from US-82 southward in Mississippi.  Several warnings just came out for the Jackson, MS warning area and these storms are increasing and intensifying.  This is expected to continue eastward late into the night and tomorrow across portions of our area.  One confirmed tornado in Central Louisiana has destroyed well built brick homes near the Atlanta community.  This is a serious situation. 

We will be deploying as things get rocky in our vicinity later tonight or tomorrow morning.  You can monitor our live streaming video at the top of the page or on WBRC-TV FOX 6 once severe weather coverage picks up.  I’ll be with meteorologist James-Paul Dice and Wes Wyatt once continuous coverage begins.  More later…

The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma has issued a slight risk of severe weather for areas just to our southwest on Monday as a strong surface and upper level system will approach our area.  The risk of damaging winds and tornadoes are involved with this system.  For our area….we are continuing to monitor the progression of instability and the higher dewpoints on the numerical model guidance.  This will be critical in determining where and when/if any severe weather will occur.

The NAM (short range model) and GFS/ECMWF all have different timing.  The GFS is the fastest with the system with the NAM being the slower, more unstable model.  This model gives us our best shot at severe weather with a slower cold frontal passage.  This allows the moisture to surge further north on the model.

Timing will be key in all of this, but at this time areas south of I-20 stand the best chance at getting into the severe stuff on late Monday night and Tuesday morning.  More later with specifics on the potential threat.