Archive for the ‘Video’ Category

This damage was seen along HWY-21 as we entered Coosa County this afternoon just outside of Sylacauga.  The driver was uninjured and the tree was cleared rather quickly.  High winds also caused damage to many other areas south and east of 20/59.

This storm was tornado warned as it came across eastern Arkansas and entered and passed Star City.  The storm went on to produce tornadoes as it crossed the Mississippi River.

Here is some footage of the Marengo County storm we caught on April 15th that we have been unable to get off the HD camera until now.  The camera view is a bit shaky at times, but it gives you a much better perspective on what was going on if you choose the 1080p method of viewing with the debris flying.  Then another video of the supercells as it traveled northeast and dropped more small tornadoes and produced incredible structure.

Second video of the structure….

More videos to come of the incredible month of April and May that we had….

Insane footage taken today by a TV tower cam of the Springfield, Massachusetts tornado as it developed and raked across the river into town.  Some fatalities have been reported and major damage has also been confirmed.  Couplets like this don’t go without doing some kind of damage….

Friday, April 15, 2011 proved to be one the most intense chases we’ve ever been on, and was certainly the most intense chase we’ve had in the state of Alabama. For nine straight hours the western portion of the state was battered by supercells and tornadoes. This is a recap of that day from our perspective.

We departed our office around 8:00AM and met with our rider, Justin Chandler, for the day in Birmingham. We then traveled to Tuscaloosa and initially were going after some storms that had fired to the north of there. While we were sitting in traffic on the bypass, a supercell erupted just across the Alabama/Mississippi border in Wayne County, MS and immediately began rotating. This storm went tornado warned within the first 20 minutes of its life. We spun around and headed south down I20/59 then AL28 toward Livingston, AL. We intercepted the storm just south of Linden in Central Marengo County, AL. Timing and placement were perfect. Just as we approached an open intersection at AL69 and AL10 a massive multi-vortex tornado appeared from our right. Below is a video clip from that. We would later learn that this tornado killed a person in a mobile home just southeast of Linden. Due to our partnership with WBRC-TV FOX-6 in Birmingham, Brett was in contact with Robert (Our Producer) for the afternoon.  Here is a view LIVE of what Mickey Furgueson and the rest of the FOX-6 Storm Warn team were viewing from our vehicle during the noon newscast.

This really set the tone for the rest of the day and the outbreak.  The storms was really wrapping up as we sat at the intersection of AL-10/AL-69.  Here is our view of the radar as the cell approached and came right over our location.

This was radar imagery of the tornadic circulation as they approached us and crossed our area.  Figures 3 and 4 show the significant inbound and outbound winds showing strong rotation and the tornado as it approached and passed us.  This was our first storm intercept of the day….and there were several more.  I will be making an updated post of the next few videos that I take off when I get a chance. 

I will leave you with this radar and Water Vapor image of the entire outbreak.

Last night….a large supercell developed along the Nebraska/Iowa border and completely raked West-Central and Northern Iowa with several large tornadoes and a swath of damage.  We have some interesting radar imagery we wanted to share to show how strong this beast was along with some video and photo documentation from fellow chasers of our media group, KDR Media.

Base Reflectivity shows the well pronounced hook and inflow region gong strait into Mapleton around 710 PM Central time last evening.  This is as the tornado was getting organized on the SW side of town.

You can see the tornado coming strait through the town of Mapleton here with the 0.5 degree inbound/outbound velocities beginning to converge and max out as the tornado plows through town.  This tornado did significant damage all across this area.  This parent supercell thunderstorm apparently produced several large, destructive tornadoes over the course of a 4 hour period across Iowa.  So far, we haven’t heard of any confirmed fatalities.

The video below comes from fellow KDR Media stringers Skip Talbot and Mike Boik.

Also….some damage video from KDR Media Stringer Mike Brady.

We will continue to update this story as it unfolds.  Another high end severe weather event is expected across the northern plains and upper midwest later today.  Stay tuned…

The video below showcases the storms that we were able to catch up with on 3/26/2011 across Central Alabama where many storms went into rotation yet only produced very few tornadoes.  Large hail was prevalent during these events as well. 

This is video that I shot earlier today during the heavy rainfall as it was unfolding.  Flood waters trapped people in there homes and started rising toward the doors of some vehicles.  River flooding is also prevalent across many areas this afternoon. 

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.

We have mentioned over the last several weeks that there would be some big changes coming to the way we do things this year and we are now ready to announce some of those things.  First of all….we are working toward a new graphical image for our site and pages.  This includes the header banner, logo, mapping, and forecast graphics that you see posted here on Alabama Storm Trackers.com.  We are working on some apparel that will be coming out in the near future along with building our complete business model.  Here is the new Alabama Storm Trackers logo that we have decided on…

You will see this bad boy on most of our graphics along with our vehicle and any apparel that we distribute or put up for sale in the coming few months.  This is something that we are excited to have revamped and have original just for us.

Next….our streaming will be changing.  After a long run with Severe Studios we have decided to take our video needs in a different direction in terms of streaming.  We will still be providing a live stream for you guys on the road with GPS data access just like we always have.  We will just have a new provider.

ChaserTV.com will host our streaming this season for our web site and media clients.  You can still access our streaming page by clicking the “LIVE Chasecam and Chat” button at the top.  We have created a new chat that will be much better and moderated over the season during severe weather events while we are in the field.  We will be working to communicate with our followers while we are out unless it is just an extreme situation. We are excited about this change and look forward to new challenges in the coming days.

Now….to the big part of our announcement.  After long discussions and much planning the Alabama Storm Trackers have developed a partnership with a company/site that continues to grow and expand there client base over the entire continental United States…

The Alabama Storm Trackers are teaming up with Storm Scape LIVE Photography and meteorologist Michael Phelps.  This is a very exciting move as several things are going on behind the scenes that will make this a rock solid partnership and give us potential for more business opportunities in the future.  Mike has been an extreme meteorologist, videographer, and storm chaser since 1989.  His resume includes employment with The Weather Channel, KAKE-TV in Wichita, Kansas and being a consulting meteorologist for the PGA tour.  Mike is well known in the meteorology field and the chase community and brings a lot to the table.  We only believe this venture will allow us to grow as a chase team and business.  Expect many more big announcements in the future on upcoming events from us.

We will be doing a test with our new streaming service and our Storm Scape LIVE page located HERE!  Be sure to check it out as we plan to start streaming around 4:45 – 5:00 PM tomorrow Central time.  Have a great weekend……and stay tuned!