03/12/06 REPORTS: KS, MO, IL, IA, OK, AR

[Mike Peregrine]

Think it's early for a chase report? So do I ... Woke up at my mom's this morning to the sound of the wx-radio blaring a tornado warning and svr t-storm warnings in Kansas. (3/14 EDIT: just wanted to note hear that the tor-warning was called for a high wind event in Lawrence that has later been confirmed as a bizarre downburst event ... this caused some noteworthy damage in Lawrence and even closed KU the next day.) Got ready real quick and went out to grab a couple shots of the elevated Buchanan Co. storm as it crossed the river into Missouri ... excellent shelf ... here are a couple quick pics ... could not get in a good spot in the hills. -- the bad news is that this storm had to have been moving every bit of 50 mph, if not more ... it took no time for it to cross over my head and move north over Agency and then to Dekalb Co. If they are all this way today, we're in trouble.

I'm talking to my mom on the phone as I write this and can hear the large hail hitting her house - it sounds terrible. She says it's covering the ground. My brother says it's tearing the trees APART in St. Joe ... he can't see across the street because there is so much hail coming down.

Then I came back to KC, where the hail was still covering the ground and lining the roads. North KC near KCI took this one on the chin, looks like - unfortunately the worst of it appeared to be around all of KCs most high-dollar luxury car dealerships ... Lexus, Acura, Humvee, etc. were all in the path of the hail core on this one. Zona Rosa also got it, looked like - getting ready to head back out - -

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v143/mikeperegrine/weather0023net.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v143/mikeperegrine/weather0038net.jpg

Here's a quick merge of the Buchanan Co. storm base ... no time to clean up now ...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v143/mikeperegrine/mergeBuchananCo.jpg

[Kevin Polston]

Woke up to hail here at my house. I am only a couple of miles from Zonarosa that Mike mentioned. Went to the door to watch a very dark cloud moving in with the hail. The winds were blowing pretty strongly too...and it looked like the table on the back deck was getting lifted. Anyway.....to my south I saw a dark cloud hanging down behind the trees. I wish I could have seen better but the trees were blocking my view. I thought I better take a look at the radar so I quickly went to my computer and saw we had a tornado warning and there was a supercell with a well defined inflow notch and appendage right about where I live! So I decided it was time to make a quick move to the basement. Stayed there a few minutes then went back up as the hail subsided. The neighbors shed next door had some minor roof damage and we had alot of hail on the ground....probably about an inch, some slightly larger, in diameter covering the ground. Pretty interesting morning to say the least. The storm that came through here about 3 hours ago is now approaching IL and still producing. Very impressive for surface temps in the 40's.

[J Gontesky]

Hail at 8:29am here in South-Central Leavenworth County just about 10 miles west of the Kansas Speedway:

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7412/2291/320/DSC04280.jpg

Hail lasted for a cople of minutes, accompanied by about a 1-minute long burst of ~50mph winds, 0.08" of rain, and then it was gone.

[Jon Holder]

I was sleeping in today after running almost 400 miles in 2 days for Civil Air Patrol...

0930 Burlingame, KS (8 mi to my North) had 3" hail. Friends of mine lost a skylight but were luckier than their neighbors - They had hail punch their roof and ceiling and into their house.

One of my friend's nephews was driving to Osage City to work when hail pierced the roof of his Neon. Luckily no injuries.

1240 had sirens go off here in Osage for a TOR warning. NWS TOP had a cell with rotation abt 12 mi to the South. Jumped and ran to check that out but by the time i got close to the area it was East and North of me. I did sit and watch some interestting rotation from the backside on a hill with some AMR paramedics North of Melvern lake.

Doesn't look like it's over for the day either...

Jon Holder

[John Sickels]

Big Day here in Lawrence, Kansas. I live about half a mile Southwest of Allen Fieldhouse.

I woke up this morning around 8 am with a thunderstorm going on outside. The wind started howling....and howling. I'd never heard wind like that before. I looked outside and it was evident that our house and immediate neighborhood was being hit by a tornado...at first I thought it might be straight line winds but the rotation was obvious...we were inside a rotating vortex with a roar that I'd never heard before. I'm quite certain it was a tornado, albeit a weak one, F0. Local radio reports lots of people in Lawrence reporting funnels.

The storm passed quickly. Our house has only slight damage, but some neighbors lost major tree limbs. Cars in the area were destroyed by trees. A school crossing sign across the street was ripped out of the ground. The power was out from 8 am to just now.

There is substantial damage through much of the city. It looks like the KU campus was hit particularly hard. Local radio reports that an air conditioner unit was ripped off a high-rise dorm and deposited in the parking lot.

My guess, from being inside the damn thing and from the widespread damage, is that a weak tornado skipped across the city.

[Mike Peregrine]

I've spent my day chasing around metro Kansas City for the most part ... criss-crossing the city from Olathe to Excelsior Spgs 4 times today ... yes ... four times.

I started by heading south on 35 then west on K-10 to intercept the first storm coming up near DeSoto ... I'm not sure what time this was at this point. - - - Anyway, the storm had an awesome wall cloud, and the CGs were just crazy around the meso. This was the single leader stuff that we often see around mesos and it was powerful! The storms were moving a minimum of 55 mph today ... minimum. And that through an urban area is just wild. I followed this storm back up through downtown Kansas City ... had to stop twice for hail along the way. What was UP with these storms and hail today? ... This was the craziest day for hail I can remember ... When I got downtown the sirens were blasting, as they had been in Johnson Co., KS too ... but downtown it was really eerie - - the clouds were booking over the tops of the high rises and I had to be close to the hook - lots of cool inflow there. So I kept chasing north ... then double-backed to catch another cell that produced a nice wall cloud over Kansas City, Kansas ... there is finally a terrific place to view the Mo River valley near Briarcliff that was perfect for watching the new wall cloud, this one also ended up moving very close to downtown. Over Liberty it reorganized with GREAT inflow bands - and I even called it in. Kept going up to Excelsior Springs when I got tired of chasing fast storms and started to come home. Then my bro calls and tells me there are new cells firing on the juicy side of the dryline southwest of Olathe near Ottawa (again) ... so I went back south on 35 and intercepted a new storm base south of Lenexa ... I could not keep up with it, but tried. I finally came home and gave up trying to race these things in favor of a beer.

Wall cloud at DeSoto:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v143/mikeperegrine/webweather0002.jpg

CG:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v143/mikeperegrine/CG-capture.jpg

Convection redeveloping south of downtown:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v143/mikeperegrine/webweather0018.jpg

Back to Olathe:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v143/mikeperegrine/webweather0021.jpg

Out my apartment window a few minutes ago:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v143/mikeperegrine/webweather0022.jpg

Update - Just took these 5 mins. ago from my apartment window:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v143/mikeperegrine/webweather0025.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v143/mikeperegrine/webweather0030.jpg

[Patrick Ware]

Here are some shots climbing out of MCI airport at 0730 this morning. As you can see, the cell structure was already very organized and the beginnings of a very good chase day were beginning.
This is what the storms look like from above.

http://www.warewebs.com/assets/images/mci31206.jpg

http://www.warewebs.com/assets/images/mci1031206.jpg

http://www.warewebs.com/assets/images/mci02021206.jpg
Check out the outflow boundary on this picture.

Here is a link to my website picture page which details the two days of storms from our vantage point. I have a picture up which shows a core punch at 41000 feet. Not for the faint of heart but it was necessary at the time. Webpage Pictures of KS & IL Super Cells from High Altitude (http://www.warewebs.com/html/pictures.htm)

[Angela Brasher]

It's been a twelve hour day here in Excelsior Springs (Ray county). Woke to a tornado warned storm that produced 1 inch hail and high winds. Lots of wind damage reported, mostly to outbuildings and trees. Ended up with hail damage to both of my vehicles. Several more tornado warned storms throughout the day with another round of heavy 1 inch hail late in the evening.

Video clip of earliest hail storm.
www.storm-site.com/stmglry/0312/03-12-06.wmv (http://www.storm-site.com/stmglry/0312/03-12-06.wmv)

Hail core coming in:
http://www.storm-site.com/stmglry/0312/IMG_1646.JPG

http://www.storm-site.com/stmglry/0312/IMG_1662.JPG

Finally some do-able lightning!
http://www.storm-site.com/stmglry/0312/IMG_1724.JPG

http://www.storm-site.com/stmglry/0312/IMG_1733.JPG

[Joey Ketcham]

Me and my chase partners dediced to camp out along Highway 400 there in Montgomery County somewhere near highway 75. We sat up on a nice hill with a great view of the horizon where we saw a nicely rotating wall cloud.

We wasn't able to keep up with it, we saw some golfball sized hail on the ground in Bourbon county just south of Uniontown Kansas. Overall, nice chase day for March 12.

WALL CLOUD OFF HIGHWAY 400 IN MONTGOMERY COUNTY
http://www.kschaser.com/wall_cloud.jpg


HAIL SOUTH OF UNIONTOWN KANSAS
http://www.kschaser.com/hail.jpg
http://www.kschaser.com/hail2.jpg

TAKEN NORTH OF ERIE AT HIGHWAY 59 AND 39 JUNCTION LOOKING SW
http://www.kschaser.com/stormview.jpg

http://www.kschaser.com/haildam.jpg
We saw this car in Ft. Scott at a gas station. This car supposedly belong to some spotters who got in the wrong part of the storm at the wrong time and got hit by golfball size hail.

[John MacKay]

That gas station in Ft. Scott seemed to be a chaser convergence zone today.

I knew when I saw convection starting up just SE of Arkansas City, KS, that I was going to be trailing these storms the rest of the day.

I saw the opposite view of that group of storms (I assume they were either two supercells or two embedded supercells in one small line).

After getting news of the westward movement of the high risk, I decided to leave around noon to get to the activity. By the time I was east of Augusta, there were two cells now instead of the one while leaving Douglass.

Drove 70 mph on Highway 400 to catch up to those storms. Saw many overshooting tops indicative of the large hail that fell (all the hail reports I heard on my weather radio were ping-pong ball to baseball size). I got scared since I didn't know how far east the southern cell was in relation to the northern cell and lost time trying to make sure. I went off toward Chanute as the tornado warnings come out for both cells (and the Osage/Franklin county one). I ended up missing the rotation by 5-8 miles. I made one last effort toward Ft. Scott, but only to find the cell was in Missouri. I'm not sure if that one was the one responsible for the Columbia, MO reports or not.

Not bad considering the speed of these storms. Got to see some nice looking cloud tops and some heavy rain (I haven't seen that in a while). It's just more experience on what I can get to or not.

[Skip Talbot]

Dan Cook, Fabian Guerra and I intercepted the "quad state supercell" near Columbia, MO and followed it all the way to Mt. Pulaski, IL. Witnessed a large stovepipe around Noami, IL and watched it rope out. That's it for now...more to come...

[Shawna Davies]

What a day! (This is the first time I've posted a chase so please show mercy.)

Started out by filming a nice hail storm (at my house) this morning (I live east of KCI), and then my chase partner Rick Schmidt headed over around 1:00 P.M.

We then headed south on 169 to catch the cell coming out of Garnett, and was interrupted by the torn warn cells coming into NKC. Watched those for a short bit and decided to head south on 435 and then east on I70 to (try and) catch the cells heading into NC MO.

Ended up catching the cell in Sedalia, but only saw the tornado for a brief second. However, we saw a LOT of hail and some beautiful hail fog. Continued to try and catch up with the cell as it headed for Boonville, but finally gave up and got some food and rested a bit and met up with Doug Nelson in Booneville. He informed us that he caught one of the tornadoes on I70 (he actually got into some of the circulation), and saw a semi flipped on the west-bound side of the Hwy. This semi would almost cause us to get into trouble later.

Started back for home west on I70 when around 8:30 pm we learned of a MASSIVE cell heading right for us. By this time we had just got out of a MAJOR traffic jam that the police made us exit I'70 and take several outer roads for quite a time. (This was from the earlier semi flip), and we were now finally back on I'70. I called Jon Davies and he was kind enough to nowcast for us and advised us to get off of I'70 at 65 Hwy and head south a bit as the cell had a pretty nice hook to it.

We sat at a gas station right off of I'70 and 65 when we learned that there was a large tornado on the ground heading pretty close to us, so we went south about 10 miles more (per my request, as I was a nervous wreck being my first night chase). As we turned around to head back to I'70 (per Davies info on another cell was heading for us that would miss us if we got back on I70 heading west soon), and we saw the large wedge tornado that was just north of Marshall at this time heading east northeast. (I got it on video and will try to get stills off of it.)

As we got back on I'70 and got near Sweet Springs, we saw semi-trucks flipped around all over the place, a lot of damage and unfortunately, one truck was flipped on top of two cars. If there were people in them, I really don't see how they could have survived it. (I will never get that image out of my mind). What's really sad is that these people had pulled under the overpass to wait out the storm.

I just want to thank my partner Rick for keeping a cool head and doing such a great job tonight, and to my dear friend Jon Davies for keeping us out of harms way. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

This is definitely a chase I will never forget.

:( Shawna Helt

P.S. Excuse the poor spelling and grammar, too tired to check it.

[Glen Romine]

Wild day - was late to get in play, but intercepted the southern two cells in MO around the Columbia area neither was tornadic during the times I was able to get position. Sampled some ~ 1 inch hail. On the way home witnessed the tornado that went through southwest Springfield, IL which was visually impressive with the 'look' of a classic strong tornado (barrel tornado I'm guesing ~ 1/4 mile wide), illuminated by frequent lightning and numerous power flashes. Thought we were about to become debris coming up the west side of Springfield behind the tornado - apparently as the tornado came through the power plant on the southwest side of town it caused damage that resulted in an extremely loud roar that we feared at the time to be second tornado as we came upon it. Not sure now what we encountered, small debris falling about the time of the noise may have still been settling from the earlier tornado (estimate we were 5 minutes behind it, trying not to follow to close, but this storm was on the route home). Damage looked quite extensive in the area. Also witnessed Stan Olson's crash - he apparently ran into a large grain bin that fell onto I-72, which we encountered following re-routing to get around high tension power lines down on the interstate just east of Springfield. I'm sure he'll have a full report later, but he looked fine, and the car damage didn't appear too bad.

Sorry about the corrections - I was tired last night.

[Brian Stertz]

Night time wedge tornado with a second smaller strong to violent tornado was seen by myself and Rich/Ryan Thies between Nelson and Arrow Rock MO (Saline Co.)...we had a good clean shot of the classic dryline tornadic supercell from just north of I-70...about 6 miles east of the I-70/US 65 intersection. Just fresh off the chase...I will post stills from video if they turn out. We also watched yet another wedge track west of Boonville MO but we were off a good 10-12 miles to it's west. That particular tornado appeared to be almost a mile wide for as long as we watched it from near Longwood (N. Pettis Co.) Too bad it was night, but tornadoes were still quite visible with help of typical higher dryline supercell bases and good clean RFD's. Earlier in the afternoon, we just always seemed a step behind and missed the Sedalia wedge by getting cut off by the nasty hailcore.

All in all...probably a 9/10 for the synoptic setup...and a 5/10 for chase quality (thanks to several early afternoon setbacks and of course rocketing tornadoes)...a complete chase account will be on my site...Vortex Times...with hopefully some video stills of the chase. Not much opportunity was conducive for photography Sunday. Rich picked up some nice "vehicular momentos" and a cracked windshield from the pounding we took in Sedalia. Had brief meetings with Jeff and Kathryn Piotrowski along the chase trail which stayed red hot up until about 10pm when we called it a day in Sedalia

[Mickey Ptak]

I will add to this in detail tomorrow evening after I get off work, but I just got home and am ready for bed. (pardon the grammar and misspelling, it is late and I really do not give a rats rear about typos right now)

I stayed in Springfield, Mo over night last night so I could get a fresh and head start with out rushing this morning. My first target was Marshall, MO. I wanted to get ahead of the cells as much as possible so that I would not have to chase 45 mph + storms. Well just as the RUC forecasted, cells started to fire in S and SE KS by 11:30am. I was not even close to Marshall, MO so I just went to I-70 and headed back east towards KC. The cells where not moving quite as fast at that time so I dropped south on hwy 7 and 71 all the way down to Adrian, MO. I drove west through town and just as I broke out of town I saw rapid northward rain curtains wrapping around the low level meso. I drove just a few more blocks past some trees then I saw the tornado / funnel (it was half way down). Below are a few images of the first tornado.

http://www.mesomick.com/pages/images/20061...abbedFrame6.jpg (http://www.mesomick.com/pages/images/20061203/GrabbedFrame6.jpg)
http://www.mesomick.com/pages/images/20061...abbedFrame2.jpg (http://www.mesomick.com/pages/images/20061203/GrabbedFrame2.jpg)
http://www.mesomick.com/pages/images/20061...abbedFrame7.jpg (http://www.mesomick.com/pages/images/20061203/GrabbedFrame7.jpg)

Very shortly after these images the tornado lifted and the cell raced off to the NE and there was no way I could catch it with the roads I had to deal with. SO.... I went east on 18 out of Adrian and intercepted the most southern storm of the bunch. It took a while for this thing to get itself together and the first tornado I saw was just on the south side of the town of Calhoun, MO. There I saw a persistent funnel and three brief spin-ups.
Images below.

http://www.mesomick.com/pages/images/20061...abbedFrame4.jpg (http://www.mesomick.com/pages/images/20061203/GrabbedFrame4.jpg)
http://www.mesomick.com/pages/images/20061...abbedFrame5.jpg (http://www.mesomick.com/pages/images/20061203/GrabbedFrame5.jpg)

Lastly I followed this same southern cell to Sedalia, MO. There I just missed the "reported" 1/2 mile tornado but I did manage to get the the end of the tornado as it was moving off to the east.

Images below.
http://www.mesomick.com/pages/images/20061...abbedFrame8.jpg (http://www.mesomick.com/pages/images/20061203/GrabbedFrame8.jpg)


By this time I knew I could not catch up with this cell so I was finished. Just to the south of Sedalia there was a significant damage path. With house roofs torn off and telephone poles snapped in half.
As I drove north out of town there was tons of golf ball size hail (looked like snow) on the ground and very very foggy.

Ok I am done for now I will get more detailed later (along with spelling lol).

Mick

[Dick McGowan]

Mike Deason, Darin Brunin and I witnessed four tornadoes after dark, in the vicinity of where Shawna Helt and Brian Stertz were. Inflow was incredible. Full report and pictures will be up soon.

[Darin Brunin]

First of all our thoughts and prayers go out to all of those affected by the severe weather today.

Second, thank you Matt Jacobs, Eric B'Hymer, Jeremy Goodwin, and Marcus Opitz for the great nowcasting that you did today. I may have left out someone but I am too tired to remember.


Well, I don't really know where to start with this but here goes. Sorry about the length but so much happened today that there is no way that it could be short. Mike Deason, Dick McGowan, and I stayed the night last night in Joplin, MO. Learning of what happened back here in Lawrence I was pretty upset to say the least. We drove north with an initial target of Ottawa, KS. Sure enough storms fired northeast of Emporia and moved in that direction. After the storm finally got a nice looking wall cloud on it, it started to take on a more linear appearance. It surged eastward and buried us. We got pounded by hail up to baseball size. We hurried to get out of the hail and as soon as we were about ready to head southeast to catch the storms in Linn County we got word that the storm we had just ran from was intensifying into a supercell again. We then chased it through the KC metro area north as it produced several wall clouds and a nice anticyclonic funnel. After getting out of the KC metro area the storm seemed to have passed the warm front and got very grungy. We then finally decided to move to the southern storms. We tried to play catch up with this storm for what seemed like hours. We got close enough to the tornado near Sedalia that debris was falling out of the sky but we could never see the tornado. After passing through Columbia, MO we decided to call it quits on that storm. We then met up with Garry Wellman and Caleb Lawrence and chatted for a while.

After this we decided to head back towards home keeping the thought of the storms firing to our west in the back of our minds and knowing if they went tornadic that we would be in good position to intercept them. Well, on our way back I70 was backed up for miles. We snailed down the interstate at a very slow pace. After about an hour we learned that there was a tornado warned storm heading directly towards us. Knowing this we did not want to be with the congested traffic on I70 if a tornado was bearing down on us. We pulled off I70 about a 1/2 mile to the north and shot lightning photography keeping in the back of our minds what could be coming. Sure enough after about 15 minutes we saw the RFB appear and then almost instantly a monster emerged. Winds at the surface changed almost instantly from cool damp air to warm muggy air and we could definitely tell that something big was happening. Just then a big tornado that looked very strong was moving the north about a mile to our west. It started to get even larger when a second wall cloud developed to the southeast of it and put down a second tornado on the ground. The inflow to all of this was incredible and made it hard for tripods to even stay standing. As the large tornado moved further north it was starting to approach a width of around 3/4 of a mile wide. The after about 10 minutes the meso started to occlude from what we could tell. We then moved morth as another wall cloud developed and put down tornado #3. After seeing the ground circulation with it we ran into muddy roads that we did not want to compete with.

THINGS HAPPEN
Oh what do you know? Another tornado warned cell was about 20 miles to our southwest near Whiteman AFB moving at us. We decided to move south of the interstate to intercept this storm. As we a approached it a beautiful lightning lit meso appeared to our southwest while we were getting slammed by some more large hail although we were not in the core. We then got to highway 65 just as it was approaching the highway. We then decided to race the storm to try and get south of it. As we moved south the meso started to move over us although we could not see a tornado on the ground. In an instant the wind picked up and definitely had circulation with it on the ground as the direction changed about 5 times in 5 seconds. Rocks, Grass, and many other objects were slamming our vehicle. We are thinking that we drove through a weak tornadic circulation. It was in no way on purpose and we shouldn't have made the mistake that we did but we sure as hell did not want to have the meso move directly over us. We finally got about a 1/2 mile down the road away from danger and turned around. Upon looking to the north there were power flashes. We then watched the meso move off to the east with a possible tornado although we could not confirm it. After this we decided that we had encountered enough for the night and decided to break off of the that storm. Again, quick decisions had to be made and after reading this section if you think that we made a bad decision. Well, I can guarantee you that you would see differently if you were put in the same situation.

After arriving back at I70 we started to head towards home. I70 was backed up again and after about 10 minutes of driving about 20 miles per hour we came up on the cause of the delay. The large tornado that passed over the interstate a while earlier had caused major damage. It was heartbreaking to see the car that had been crushed by a semi. The way we figured it had happened was that the car had pulled up on the shoulder under an OVERPASS. The semi apparently had pulled up beside the car. When the tornado hit the semi and car were both pushed against the side of the overpass with the semi ending up on top of the car. I don't see how anyone in the car could have survived because it was almost completely crunched. I hope to god that the people did though although we have not recieved word. It really made the whole night seem a lot less important because of what had happened. I can't even begin to describe how I felt when I saw that disturbing image. It really makes you look at how precious life really is. If we had not pulled off earlier I feel that we would have been almost in the same area as where the tornado moved over. Basically, the cars congested on I70 were slowly moving targets and there was nothing that I feel the targets could have done to get out of the way of the tornado. It's just a horrible feeling right now that I still have stuck in the back of my mind and I hope the people in that area and all over the best as this has been a horrible day for many areas.

here is a quick still that I uploaded. two tornadoes on the ground. the tornado then got wider after this. I will post more tomorrow but am too tired right now after writing this.

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v226/bruninda/IMGA00013.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v226/bruninda/large.jpg

After looking at this it looked like the tornado started to get rain wrapped
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v226/bruninda/large2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v226/bruninda/DSCF1203.jpg

[Bart_Comstock]

We got hit hard in Eastern Benton County, NW Arkansas. A large tornado touched down just out side of Siloam Springs and Ripped across parts of Centerton, and Gentry and dissipated shortly before moving in to Bentonville. I counted about 4-5 homes leveled. The path was about 2-300 yards wide, and luckily no one was killed. Trees and lines are down and we also can smell gas, and many houses have been damaged. I have spent the last several hours helping with the search and rescue in the area. Also Bentonville was hit hard by straight line winds and the tornado, and in my front yard I my grass was covered by hail, some the size of baseballs. The tornado also touched down next to the High School and ripped apart the indoor foot ball field and also severely damaged the new stadium. Before making it to the high school the tornado started skipping along Bentonville and destroyed much of the municipal airport. After it hit the high school the tornado continued to skip along, it then landed in the Collage Place sub division behind NWACC (Northwest Arkansas Community Collage) and destroyed several homes there as well as snapping the power polls like tooth picks. The "twister" then headed into little flock and, from what I have been told, ha leveled much of the city. Finally the storm headed out into the Pea Ridge area and stayed on the ground till it went into Barry County, Missouri where it finally dissipated around 11:00pm. The tornado track is about 75 miles long and it is being recorded as an F3. It has been around 36 years since Benton and Washington County have seen a tornado hit the area of that magnitude. The tornado also caused major damage in Delaware County in Oklahoma. In Oklahoma the Tornado leveled a sub division and took out many trees and power lines as well as driving a fully intact Snapple bottle through a fiberglass building with out breaking or spilling the contents of the unopened glass Snapple bottle. Power is also out on the south side of Fayetteville yet the Denny's I am at had emergency power as well as working wifi. We headed down here to get ahead of the rotating cell that moved into this county (Washington County, Ark.) from Adair County, Oklahoma. At times it was reported that there were two tornadoes on the ground as it skipped through Bentonville.

My case today went fairly well. I started heading out towards Claremore, Oklahoma around 2:00pm. By the time we got there the first line of storms was moving our way. We headed NW up Route 66 and followed a cell into Oswego. It was at that time we had another cell come up behind us and pelted us with quarter to golf ball sized hell. We followed that cell into Columbus and then it began to move out of reach, to our NW so we turned our attention to a now rotating cell to our south. We tried to get ahead of it but were unable to and thus we snuck in front of it by going towards Vinita and then jumped on I-44 and drove to Joplin, Mo, where we then took Hwy 71 south and got just ahead of the storm to see it spin through Benton County. It passed by us in Bentonville and then as we began to follow it we started to get reports of severe damage by Byers road (I think I spelt that right), just west of Centerton, and thus we went to the hit area to assist in the recover efforts. The funnel its self had that classic look to it, it was not a wedge. It looked a lot like a wide elephant’s trunk. Living in tornado alley I am used to hearing about tornadoes, and as a result of chasing them I am all to familiar with what they can do, but when I left my house today I couldn't even imagine that one would come with in about 2-3 miles of my home and threaten those who I love. I am just great full that no on got killed.

Well I am off to go help at the Red Cross shelter unless something else blows in. Stay safe out there, everybody.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that there have been several injuries, yet, thankfully there have not been any fatalities.
Also they are calling the Tornado an F3.

[Jeff Snyder]

I headed up to se KS with a few fellow chasers (Robin T., Dan D., and Phil H.)... We weren't able to get on the initial supercells that developed in far eastern KS in the early afternoon, and we ended up waiting around Independence for most of the day. Convection did initiate about 5pm in se KS, but they looked incredibly sheared over and rather unimpressive. As night fell, convection filled in and moved eastward into MO. We dipped south a bit into extreme ne OK, but weren't able to really get onto anything. The storms were hauling to the E and NE, so we called the chase off. I was surprised it took so long to initiate dryline convection in eastern KS and OK... *shrug* ... It was nice to see a storm at least, but it really looked like the storms didn't have enough CAPE to really do much, at least until dark and until they moved into MO... Oh well.

[David Schuttler]

Updated 3-13 to add video grabs of Tornado near Bentonville.

http://stormdriven.com/cblog/uploads/March12th2006chase0342.jpg
http://stormdriven.com/cblog/uploads/March12th2006chase0345.jpg

Further updates will added to my blog or website http://stormdriven.com/cblog/

12 hours and 460 miles so just a couple pics from west of Bentonville and some damage from S.W. of Kansas Ok. I havn't looked at any video yet maybe tommorow. I started off East of Stillwater,Ok. and headed into Osage County following storms up to Bartlesville then caught up almost to cells east of Oolagah then followed to Adair then went south and east to intercepted the one coming through Locust Grove and Kansas Ok. By the time I got a good view it was almost to Bentonville. There was a lot of damage reports from south west of Locust Grove all the way past Bentonville (long track?) I came across debris in Bentonville , even a hay bale in the road . Now to find some duct tape to pull this insulation out of my skin... More later once I get some video grabs
http://stormdriven.com/cblog/uploads/IMG_1741.jpg

http://stormdriven.com/cblog/uploads/1738.jpg

http://stormdriven.com/cblog/uploads/IMG_1753.jpg

http://stormdriven.com/cblog/uploads/IMG_1755.jpg

[nickgrillo]

Very large, strong tornado with incredible ground circulations... The RFD was incredible, I have never felt anything like it in my life. A few of the gusts surpassed 100mph...

I left Detroit at around 2am to Jacksonville, IL -- and intercepted the Marion/Ralls, Co tornadic (confirmed yet?) supercell -- missed the tornadoes, but still got some excellent hail, and there was relatively decent cloud base rotation (can't believe the storm survived and produced tornadoes with that kind of CAPE). I then continue on, meandering through MO, only to decide to head back (after playing around with the Sedalia, MO storm -- and never being able to get into position). So, I get just to the southwest of Springfield, IL on I-72 only to get hammered with significant RFD gusts (>100mph)just south of the main large tornado, along with a few golfball hail stones smashing me. I got a few pretty decent views of the tornado as it ripped through the city of Springfield. This was the most intense supercell that I have ever witnessed.

A short clip of the Springfield, IL tornado and me screaming (!) as it gets illuminated by a powerflash:
http://www.midwestchase.com/march12th-spri...eld-tornado.wmv (http://www.midwestchase.com/march12th-springfield-tornado.wmv)

[Kurt Wayne]

Well, last night I was "in" the Bentonville tornado.

The previous day (3/11/06) the supercell which came from Cherokee County Oklahoma (Tahlequah) went right over our business in Centerton, AR, just west of Bentonville. That one was an HP event, and the front sheared anvil looked very smooth angling from the southwest. The rain was the heaviest I can recall since moving to northwest Arkansas in 2002 but once it left all I saw was a "rock-hard" updraft to the east. A tornado warning was issued shortly thereafter for eastern Benton County, and the storm remained "warned" all the way into eastern Missouri south of St. Louis. (I believe this may have been the storm which killed two people near St. Mary's, MO, sadly). There was some lightning with this storm but it didn't seem that intense.

Well...

Yesterday, like Saturday, was quite warm. Convection was evident by mid-morning on Saturday, but there was far less cloud cover yesterday. Checking radar before leaving our store I saw from storms firing up over what appeared to be a weak dryline (at the time the storms were not connected) but the radar images were far less impressive for our area than the day before.

Driving to the Wal-Mart just across the border in McDonald County, MO, I saw some lightning in the cloud tops over what appeared to be the Joplin area 50 miles north. Listening to AM 740 in Tulsa there were reports of rain and hail all over the city and two storms with strong rotation...one in Rogers County (headed most likely for Joplin or north) and one in Wagoner County, OK (good chance that it was headed our way). Returning home and walking my dog around 8:30 pm I noticed a strong inflow from the south and figured it was feeding the Joplin area storms. I talked with a neighbor about how I'd ducked into her garage with my dog in November when I saw power flashes to the west and heard an oncoming "waterfall" noise (turned out to be high winds which snapped a few lines that night). I told her hopefully tonight wouldn't be THAT bad. :roll:

The missus and I were watching "Crossing Jordan" while our NBC affiliate had tornado warned areas (Adair and Delaware County, OK, immediately to the east). Suddenly, Benton County got "warned" as well and they cut to local continuous weather. The meteorologist (Rick Katzfey of KNWA) started saying they were receiving "tornado on the ground" reports on Route 412 in Oklahoma west of Siloam Springs, AR (far southwest part of our county). He was showing doppler radar areas where strong rotation appeared to be. He said THIS storm, unlike the previous day's, was an LP cell and that one could probably see the oncoming wall cloud.

Immediately I bolted out the front with my daughter as my son said the sirens were sounding. The beautiful anvil was over us from the southwest, scalloped in appearance rather than smooth, with very active anvil crawler CC bolts. Our dog shot out the door but (praise God) he came back shortly, as did our cat. My son and I brought our pet rabbit and his cage in. The kids got in their respective shelters and my wife Sandra and I kept watch on the TV. The storm track on the TV looked like it would go just northeast of us. The indicated movement (as well as what I saw of the anvil) looked like it could go right over us.

Well, the local tower cams zeroed in on what they thought was a wall cloud. They thought the storm was nearing Bentonville. Then the power and TV went out and I told my wife to get in the bathroom. I wouldn't go outside, but in the dark I went straight to our living room window (facing south).

I saw what appeared to be three conical clouds bunched together like three great stalactites in front of a discolored mass that looked like rain...they were about a half-mile/-3/4 mile due south, and looked like they were headed for Wal-Mart's Technology center there. I kept waiting for them to rotate around one another but couldn't see that...then I started seeing what appeared to be a power flash or two. THEN I saw big square chunks of debris spin and lift into the air around the Technology center, and I headed for the bathroom. I prayed in the tub. My son prayed in the closet. All the time I could feel the house shaking just a bit and seemed to feel a few objects hit it.

Then I heard a strange noise...like a hissing sound. SSSSssss.....SSSSssss. Were these subvortices or suction spots? First thing I thought of was an old episode of "Star Trek" where there were people who had been "sped up" and their voices sounded like buzzing bees.

After the last hiss all was dead quiet as the low pressure was on top of us. I wasn't sure if we were going to get hit by another vortex but after a minute or two it appeared the action was over (the storm was moving about 50mph). I went to my north window and saw the wall cloud lit up by lightning and occasional explosions, moving off to the northeast.

Well, after everyone went out to take a look I was amazed...our neighbor to the west has a hole in his roof and his playhouse is smashed. Our neighbors to the north have gaping holes in their fences and several missing shingles. Our neighbor to the east had his roof scoured (on OUR side of the roof) to the wood, and the backglass of his van was blown out. And our neighbors to the south (closest to the main part of the tornado, apparently) have fences down, roof damage, etc. The house across the street to the south had a trampoline ring set right down over their tree. His hot tub was lifted up then dropped. A subdivision a mile east sustained heavy damage with roofs completely blown off. Some neighbors down the street lost windows and walls. We weren't in the hail area, either, yet north and west of us they got lots of it...my in-laws south of Gravette lost the globes off their lamp post from it.

And we've gotten away with (apparently) only damage to our central air unit on the east side of the house in east Bentonville. I can't tell any roof damage. Both our vehicles were left out and they were fine.

Prayer works...hope I'm never that close to a twister again.

[Russel Parsons]

I left Pittsburg, Kansas around noon yesterday, with a target of Parsons, Kansas. After arriving in Parsons, Kansas and checking data at the local Super 8 Motel, I saw that a tornado warned supercell was west of my location, near Neodesha, Kansas. I decided to head north out of Parsons and attempt to intercept the supercell north of Erie, Kansas.
I saw a nice rotating wall cloud to the north of Stark, Kansas. Stark is located in the extreme northeast corner of Neosho County, Kansas. I only got a couple photos of the wall cloud, as the supercell was screaming to the northeast towards Ft. Scott, Kansas.


Looking West From 1 Mile East Of Stark, Kansas 2:55 P.M. (Neosho County) http://www.russparsonspictures.com/~photos/tn/785_1024.ts1142261474671.jpg

http://www.russparsonspictures.com/~photos/tn/782_1024.ts1142261531843.jpg

I met up with Joey Ketchem and crew in Ft. Scott, Kansas. We headed back to Pittsburg, Kansas to regroup, and hope for more storms to refire to our west. We went back to the Erie, Kansas area where we watched some towers attempt to get going, only to be sheared off.

Towards sunset we finally got some more severe storms to develop north of Erie, Kansas. Got too dark to see anything and we headed back home.

All photos from this event can be found at http://www.russparsonspictures.com/March12...ansasWallCloud/ (http://www.russparsonspictures.com/March122006StarkKansasWallCloud/)

[Bob Hartig]

We caught the Springfield storm, too. I haven't had a chance to look at my video from yesterday yet--got home at 4 a.m. and up for work at 7. But, in brief, Bill Oosterbaan and I caught the bottom two storms of the lineup in mid-Missouri. We met up with the first northwest of Columbia, then dropped south to catch the the Sedalia storm, and ultimately wound up playing tag with it as it moved all the way across Missouri and into Illinois. There, it soon swallowed the other storm to its north, strengthened, and kept on chugging across Illinois into Springfield, then on across the rest of the state, crossing the border into Indiana in the town of Watseko. This storm formed in Kansas, crossed two entire states, and finally started losing its strength and supercellular appearance in northwestern Indiana--though interestingly, after we made it into Michigan, I fired up the laptop again and saw a clearly defined supercell right about where this storm would have been if it had re-strengthened.

Anyway, of all the storms that moved across Illinois later on, this storm was definitely the main act. If you look at SPC's storm reports, you'll see a red belt of tornado reports extending across Illinois; those mark the path of this storm.

After a number of years of relatively fruitless chasing, we hit pay dirt, but I have very mixed feelings about it. Watching the transformers blowing in Springfield and seeing the semis and cars blown off the road along I 72 heading into town was a sobering reminder that this hobby is not all fun and games.

[Brian Emfinger]

I had to be really careful on this chase as i had gotten my windsheld all cracked up during the storms on Saturday night in western Arkansas. I targeted the area around henryetta, ok. I was concerned about going too far west and north and not being able to get back south and east to fort smith in case something did develop in se oklahoma. Convection held off later than i expected but a little before 6pm i started seeing some returns on radar just west of Tulsa.
http://realclearwx.com/images/031201.jpg

I headed north towards Tulsa but only went about halfway there b/c i noticed some towering cu going up west and southwest of me. i sat near beggs, ok waiting for things to develop. The storm directly to my west was pretty pathetic but it was pretty and it cast a shadow all the way across the sky.
http://realclearwx.com/images/0031201.jpg
That storm strengthened slowly but did finally go severe and move into the tulsa area. on the otherside of tulsa the storm did go under tornado warnings.

As that storm moved toward Tulsa i saw another storm coming into view from the sw.
http://realclearwx.com/images/31204.jpg

Looking at radar it shows this storm started 20 miles SW of Shawnee, OK. It basically was heading straight for me slowly increasing in strength. At 640 it went severe. The storm was obviously lp in nature. It did start throwing off lightning.
http://realclearwx.com/images/31203.jpg

I had to retreat south to make sure my windshield didnt get put out completely by hail. The storm continued to be very lp in nature but it did have very good rotation but the lightning completely stopped. From a nice viewing point i could see the "mothership" look to it.
http://realclearwx.com/images/31201.jpg

Shortly after it crossed hwy 75 just to my north the storm began a rapid transformation. The lightning went from nothing to continuous very quickly. The storm just kicked into gear. I had to stop and head home because my wife had school monday morning but i took some pics of the storm (now with tornado warnings) from afar.
http://realclearwx.com/images/31202.jpg
http://realclearwx.com/images/00031201.jpg

This storm continued into ne oklahoma and nw arkansas dropping several tornadoes and causing lots of destruction in benton county, ar (centerton)

The lp storm earlier just to my west also cotinued into SW Missouri being under tornado warnings much of the time. All in all it was fun but cant wait to see the pics/vid of what the rest of you got!

Full chase report online at http://www.realclearwx.com

[Kurt Silvey]

Here’s the short version. I’ll get a more detailed report up on my site in a day or two.

I didn’t get out of Omaha until 1900z due to Wal-Mart taking 3 hours to change my tires. They were cheep, $12.00 per tire for mount & balance, but so slow. Anyway there was no way I could have done a long chase without new tires and my wife wouldn’t even think about me taking her Suburban. I can make Overland Park in roughly 3 hrs from my house, so I thought I could possibly get south of the metro area some where along hwy 69 along the KS MO border by about 2300z. At that time the latest MD from the SPC said there might be some early activity, but that storms would fire late off the dryline in eastern KS and move into MO, so anyway this was my game plan. By the time I got to ST Joe, 3 tornadic storms were already moving through the KC metro area and there was no new activity in eastern KS. So not wanting to get into the metro area with fast moving storms I headed east on Hwy 36 to setup an intercept of the north cell now moving through Excelsior Springs. While moving east on 36 there was a report of a brief touchdown just south of Cowgill, 10 –12 miles straight south of me. I did intercept this cell in Utica and stayed with it to Chillicothe, where it was down graded to Severe, with storm motions >50 mph these cells were very hard to stay with. Setting up an intercept was the only way to go, especially in the hills of northern MO. So I let this one go and dropped south to Carrollton where reports of the Sedalia wedge started coming in. I briefly thought about moving east towards Moberly to intercept the Sedalia cell, but figured I end up chasing it all the way the IL, so I headed back west on 24 to intercept a new round of storms moving through the KC metro again. Along Hwy 24 near Norborne I saw some downed trees and power lines from a tornado earlier in the morning. About 1000 turkeys later I intercepted another tornado warned cell just east of Plattsburg. I watched it from a hill somewhere west of I35, but with darkness settling in I bailed to the NW and headed home. Although this area wasn’t to bad for chasing (better than the northern tier of counties), it certainly wasn’t the prairies either, and the thought of chasing a 55 mph tornadic storm through the hills didn’t appeal to me. I didn’t get to see a tube on this sadly tragic and historic day, but I did witness some nice storms and was able to get some bugs worked out (and identify others) of my chase gear. My thoughts and prayers go out to all those who lost life and property to these storms. 478 miles. (Edited)

[Daniel Christianson]

2 years this has happened to me High Risk, and Flat Tires!




Didnt have a target so i just headed to tornado potential in Northeast MO, near kirksville, around 8 am or so driving on 36 im hearing tornado warnings already in the morning im like ok i need to haul butt!...well i left 6 am and headed to kirksville area.

sat and drove way back west towards trenton, then storms rolled in, clouds with heavy moisture were moving by fast and real low which was neat to see...

Mo roads arent fun stay off the gravel! if you dont want flat tires i managed to get 2 yep 2 .

i was sick of hearing tornado reports and some people KEY WORD( The Public and Spotters confimred a 1/2 mile wide funnel along I-70 near sedalia with major debris cloud... radio speakers i tell ya"

It sad that this day had to take some lives and cause much devistation, i mean some people have nothing left and thats real hard to take in.... i feel real upset that had to happen towards evening ... anyways heres what i salvaged... from this BUST!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v159/NEdaNE04/3-12-06-bust/kirksvilleMO.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v159/NEdaNE04/3-12-06-bust/DSC03579.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v159/NEdaNE04/3-12-06-bust/DSC03582.jpg


All them tornado reports around me and i didnt get SQUAT, oh well i need to learn how to chase these fast movers, also around hamilton tornadic sp's came through alot of lightning but you couldnt see any structre, it was like these tornadic sp's were ghosts! i sat in hamilton MO, after getting pea sized haila nd heavy rain, when i neared the Trenton Exit it was nice to see a clear sky with starts, and the sp's which passed trough the anvils were lit up by the moon it was real photogenic

oh yeah MO is the true Wildlife Chase State

I saw 7 deer
2 raccoons
4 coyotes

within 5 miles of each other( and there was alot of roadkill)

Congrats to everyone else who nabbed the storms"

[J West]

Left the Milwaukee metro area about 1:15p with an intial target somewhere between the Quad Cities and Peoria, with the anticipation that the warm front would be further north and convection in MO was going to move across the river into Illinois about 5 pm. I left so late because I wasn't going to chase at all, mostly because I anticipated having to go into MO which wouldn't jive with being back for work today. I made a last minute decision to try my luck in with the north end of this system near the warm front in WC/NW Illinois.

With the help of nowcasting from Mike Johnston, I briefly chased the tornado-warned storm that crossed I-39 near Tonica, Ill. but could only get quick glimpses of the rain wrapped and haze obscured lowering. Mike advised it was rotating and showed a TVS, but I don't believe it ever showed a funnel or produced a tornado.

(Visibility was horrible with ground-based haze, which got worse the farther south I went until finally clearing out after reaching the Springfield Ill. area.)

After the brief sidetrack, I headed further south on I-39 then I-55 into the warm sector south of Peoria. Temps went from ~45* to over 60* rapidly but the closest convection (other than the low topped storms up north) were still churning over central MO. I blasted south to the Springfield metro area to fill up and get some food about 7:15p when I started monitoring reports about the tornadic supercell headed NW into Illinois. I hung around until 8:00p and thought about heading west on I-72 to intercept the storm. In hindsight I think it was a good choice not to, since it was dark and this was not familiar territory for me. The local guys like Skip Talbot were on the storm and could move around a lot better than I, and I don't have mobile WX data yet, so I made the decision to head back north before the storm moved into Springfield.

One interesting note was the lack of information being provided by the NWS or broadcast radio before the storm hit. I couldn't hear WILL radio when the storm hit as I was too far north, but it sounds like they were the only ones on the ball. There was no mention of the severity of the supercell before the storm hit Springfield, just that it crossed the river and was tornadic in MO.

Heading back, I had no idea of the magnitude of the storm once it reached Springfield until I read the other chase forum this morning. Coming back north on I-39, I was literally dodging tornado warned storms in the cold sector. Once I got near Rockford where I was more comfortable with the road network I decided to play the next warned storm. I didn't have to wait long as a cell SW of Rockford was rotating, so I waited for it to move closer but it was very umimpressive looking with no lowering or noticable rotation. I was almost home when the same storm was again tornado warned in far SC Wisconsin. There were no reports of funnels or touchdowns with it this time either, and I couldn't see anything significant. There was ample lighting but nothing to see.

I got back home about 11:30p, with 573 miles traveled. No pics, no video..this was a learning chase more than anything. I will be checking into GR3 or WXWorks, as chasing without them is difficult considering the availability of data.

A quick thanks to Mike Johnston in VA for the nowcasting :D

[Jerry Funfsinn]

I could chase any day this week except Sunday due to work. Oh well, but I did manage to intercept the warned cell in NC IL on my way back home from work. I had to take my wife hostage to chase this thing. She did a good job and she really laughed watching a bunch of deer getting pummeled by the hail. A really good hail producer to say the least.

Link to video: http://creativejetstream.com/Video/Mar12_06Hail.wvx

Congrats to Skip, Fabian, and Dan on the Springfield tornado. I really enjoyed the cyberchase.
Jerry Funfsinn
http://www.creativejetstream.com

[Mike Parker]

Nothing real spectacular yesterday. I stayed in Eastern Kansas for various reasons and was only able to observe the cells as they initiated before they "flew" into Missouri. Most of the initiating cells formed wall clouds and slight rotation at various levels. Here are a couple of pics I took. More pics and report at http://chasethis.blogspot.com.

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e137/bgmike/storm%20pics/MARCH%2012%2006/IMG_4697_1.jpg

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e137/bgmike/storm%20pics/MARCH%2012%2006/IMG_4700_1.jpg

[Bryce Stone]

I have been working nonstop for the past week, so I was drained on Sunday. Decided after waking up late to target the development along highway 177 south of Shawnee, OK., hoping to follow the storms as they moved into the better atmosphere to the east. I watched the cell that Brian described begin near Asher. Out of many that were trying in the area, it was the only cell to make the transition to supercell. It began moving very rapidly after it became an LP cell and I followed it all the way to Bristow before admitting defeat to the very rapid NE movement. The cell transitioned to a classic supercell along the way, and I saw a well-defined wall cloud as it passed just south of Bristow. However, due to nightfall and being unable to stop for even a minute I could not tell if there was persistent lower level rotation. There was certainly a large outbreak, but the storms were just moving too fast for anything but an interception.

[APritchard]

---This is very long, sorry... and most of it is from our coverage of the SPI supercell/tornado from WILL-TV/Radio. Thanks to all of those who expressed your appreciation for our work.

I started the day with my dad, targetting Jacksonville, IL. We met up with Scott Kampas, Colin Davis, Mark Sefried, Darin Kaiser and spent the better part of the afternoon sitting around doing nothing. We debated heading into Missouri and intercepting the two intense southern supercells.. but around 5 PM called it off and headed home for various reasons. Mostly, hating Missouri, and being absolutely sick of the grey clouds and cool temps we had all day. I figured the night was going to be insane across Illinois so I figured we could just head back and get set for that. I had no idea that hours later a large tornado would cross right where we had been sitting for the entire afternoon. :rolleyes:

After getting home, I saw the main supercell was still tracking into central Illinois so I decided I would go up to work and watch the storm come into the area. Being the weekend, I was the only one in the office, so I began to wonder what I was going to do about the situation... as our head met. had not arrive back in town yet.

As I'm watching it move right towards Springfield, my boss Ed Kieser comes walking into the office (he just arrive from the Bahamas an hour earlier) and asks me "Are we going to get anything tonite?" He saw the storm I was watching and asked me where it was, and before I even finished explaining to him that it was heading right for Springfield he was freaking out. "Are we covering it?! This is HUGE! This thing is huge! We are going on now, we're interrupting whatever is on both stations and going on.. this is just what we were hoping wouldnt happen!" So he ran down the stairs and told the tv and radio people that Springfield was about to be hit by a large tornado and that we were going on the air in 5 minutes. Ed took over the main computer and asked if I was staying to help him.. I wanted to see the damn thing so I started saying.. "Yeah.. I can stay for a while, but I was thinking I might go out to-" and he interrupted me and told me I wasnt chasing the thing at night.. so I told him I was all his.

He took over the main computer so he could go on the air and be watching the storm, and I fired up the south computer to open our news programs to get him every report that came in on the storm. Its kind of an erie feeling. You watch the storm go directly over a big city, in this case, Springfield. You know there's a tornado in there. And then, once the storm passes the city... you just kind of wait. I just kept refreshing the computer programs, waiting to see what happened. I just kept thinking.. "how bad is this going to be? Yeah, we're covering it.. but are people even paying attention to us?" Then, it started coming in. First.. just reports of roofs missing from homes and businesses. But then more and more bad news... "homes demolished" "six homes severely damaged or leveled, gas leaks and people trapped in homes" It's a pretty crappy feeling. You do all you can to warn people.. but you're still going to have people seriously injured or even killed with a storm like that. But, you realise you can't just dwell on that... because the tornado is still tracking on and heading towards more small towns. I had to run downstairs to let our tv meteorologist in the building (Mike Tunnera) and his appearance was enough to make me worried. I've never seen a weather man, so afraid of the weather. He asked me what was going on.. and I explained to him that Springfield had just been hit. He then went on about how.. "At first I thought this was pretty cool, a huge storm like that coming through the area, it just doesnt happen very often and I was pretty excited... but now that I'm realising what the hell its doing out there.. I feel like I need to throw up"

I spent the next 4 hours running around the building, setting up the tv studio for Mike to go on the air.. giving the tv/radio operators updated information... warning the TV hosts who were running the pledge drive of the storm, which was heading our direction. All the while, I was also scanning the computer looking for everything I could find on the storm as it continued to produce major damage and head this direction. I became more and more worried as I envisioned us having to haul ass to a bathroom as a big damn tornado barreled down on Champaign. Fortunately the storm turned slightly northward when it got closer to us, sparing this area. But now more small towns. More reports came in from Latham, IL and Niantic, IL of homes completely destroyed with the residents trapped in their basements. I also had to answer the phone in the weather office as well as my cell phone with people asking me if they were going to get hit. I tried not to be rude.. but I was way too busy too explain to them all where the storm was going... and tried to tell them if they just listened to our coverage they would find that answer to their questions.

Near the end of the night, we recieved a call from someone in the area who found our coverage "boring" and that he was so upset that he was missing his stupid ****ing show. Ed voiced my opinion pretty well. Wtf is that guys problem. Ed went on the air and said.. "we're going to be ending our live coverage for now... but not because of the irrate call we just recieved from a listener. I realise that this storm isnt affecting everyone, and for some of you, this information isnt important. But there ARE people whos lives are being affected by this storm, and it is our repsonsibility to make sure they have plenty of warning time to take action, and save their lives" Not 5 seconds after he mentioned the complaint... the phone lines at WILL lit up with people expressing their thanks for the work that we did that night. Many of them said that we probably saved their life with our coverage and reports. Other people said that it was probably the best coverage of a weather event like that, that they had ever heard. That was the kind of thing that turned my night around. Just about all of the night, I was in a nervous panic. I couldnt seem to move fast enough. I felt like we were doing a good thing, but seeing all the reports of injuries and people being trapped just made me feel like it was no use. The storm was going to do what it wanted, and we werent stopped it. But to hear all the people call and express their gratitude for our hard work made me realise how worth it all of it was. By midnight, I was spent. I hadnt eaten since leaving the house around noon.. and hadnt used the bathroom for hours. When the live coverage ended, I got up... walked downstairs and shut off the lights in the tv studio... used the bathroom, grabbed a glass of water and went outside. I sat down on a bench outside the building, took a deep breath and just slouched down and relaxed for the first time in 5 hours.

I went back upstairs where Ed, Mike, and Dave (who had come to help out, as well as attempt to see the tornado) as well as a couple others who were working at the station were gathered in the weather office. We just discussed what had happened... and discussed the calls that had been coming in. There wasnt much to celebrate however, as even more storms were heading into the area. We took a short break to grab some food/drink and clear up the huge piles of paper from the first storm, and then got ready for round two. Around 2 in the morning another storm moved into the Springfield area, which had already been hit by the large tornado earlier. We went back on the air live, but not continuous this time letting people know that there may be another tornado in the area. Blah blah.. fast forward until about 3 or 3:30 in the morning when it looked like things might finally be calming down. I started cleaning up the office and getting rid of some of the paper. Ed and I were definetly falling asleep at our computers at this time.. so I said I was finally going to head home and get a few hours of sleep before I had to get up to take a test in 4 hours.

[Scott Olson]

Pete McConnell and I left for Kansas City early in the day. We were right behind the storm that hit St. Joe and saw baseball sized hail stuck in a fence. We then went south to Platte City and we noticed approaching storms from SE KS. As the storms drawed near the WF they took a more ENE direction so we blasted east. We then went south to Excelsior Springs. The storm went east along the boundary so we were in the core and took some footage of 1" inch hail. Aside from the hail there wasn't much for identifying features. We went south into KC and intercepted several cells by driving parallel to there tracks. None of them very impressive visually and looked pretty sheared out. We then followed a quasi-linear line up the Interstate up to Cameron, MO. Since both of us had to work the next morning we knew we would have to leave soon, but decided to wait for the line to move through and check for any changes. Well go figure, the southern storm of the line explodes and the FFD hits us with a vengance. The police tried to get people off the interstate and they were streaming into the hospital for shelter. As we stood in front keeping watch for the tornado the rain stopped and it became eeriely calm. Then with the flash of a couple lightning bolts a low wall cloud became visible. I never saw the buttom of it so it may have been a large tornado. Im looking over footage and will try and post some vid grabs when I can.

At 8pm we left MO, then at 11pm at night I entered Sioux City, NE and went to another extreme. Blizzard conditions. The road between Sioux City and Sioux Falls was pretty well covered with two inches of snow and some ice. Visibility was about 1/8 mile and took three hours to make it to Sioux Falls. As I approached the stretch that goes from Sioux Falls to Brookings the interstate disappeared under a blanket of snow. You wouldn't even know where it was if it wasn't for those reflection posts. At points visibility was no more than 100ft, no kidding. At points I crawled at 10mph on the interstate, guiding the car from the reflection posts and plowing through thick piles of snow with my tires. In the end it took me about 2.5 hours to go 50 miles.

[Mikey Gribble]

Jay Cazel and I left Wichita at 10 for Emporia. We checked data there and then headed East. We ended up getting on the tornado warned storm near Ottawa Kansas. The storm could never really get its act together so we decided to drop South to the newer supercell that was coming off the dryline. About 15 minutes after we left the Ottawa storm it lost its tornado warning and the storm we were intercepting went tornado warned. We had to race South and East to get ahead of the storm so that we could get a view of the updraft base without getting hammered by hail and we just barely made it. There was a nice lowering that looked like it could turn into a wedge at any time, but unfortuneately we had to get out of the way of some wrap around precipitation and didn't get to spend long on the storm.
After that we stair stepped down to the tail end storm (Sedalia storm) and intercepted it just East of the MO-KS border. It was flat out moving so there wasn't any time to get out and take pictures, but here are some links to video grabs. The storm produced its first tornado near Butler. I am too lazy to get out the map so I may be a little off on my locations.

http://img110.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image207qe.jpg

http://img55.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image227sl.jpg

This first tornado touched down a couple times, but it never got a full condensation funnel. The storm put down its second tornado SW of Sedalia. We were struggling to keep up with the storm so I could have missed the half mile wedge that was reported, but here is what we saw.

http://img64.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image144ms.jpg

A few minutes later is when tornado emergency happened and they began broadcasting live on the weather radio. This is when they were talking about a half mile wedge doing damage. Here was our view at that time. It is tough to see, but it looks like there might be a second rope/cone tornado in the background. The tornado that was in the picture before is on the right side and the second possible tornado is on the left side of the picture and farther away.

http://img98.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image170dq.jpg

We broke off the storm East of Sedalia and headed back through town. South of town we stopped and took a few pictures of damage and called it a day. Not a bad start to the chase season. Congratulations to everyone who bagged tornadoes.








http://img239.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image144tg.jpg

[Dick McGowan]

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y230/DickTwister/lightning3.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y230/DickTwister/lightning1.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y230/DickTwister/torn1.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y230/DickTwister/torn2.jpg

Darin summed it up well. Few more pics, hard to make out the wedge in one, but the second one is clear. After this my tripod went in the mud, along with the camera due to the intense inflow.

[Sara Johnson]

After viewing the early model runs, I left Norman at 9am and headed NE for Joplin, MO. Having only a NOAA weather radio, the morning suface plots and a gas station map of Missouri, I played it safe and chose to head north on 71 for Nevada, MO, hoping to catch a few early initiating cells and hang mostly south of the region forecasters expected to get most of the activity that day.

Fortunately, I got in contact with Angie Norris who agreed to nowcast for me. At just after 1pm, she saw three cells in southeast Kansas that were heading northeast so I continued up towards Nevada. Just before Nevada, Angie confirmed that the south-most cell was looking rather isolated and would likely be the best bet. As I entered the Bates County, the south cell was tornado warned. I pulled off to get a better view, and as I did, the sirens began to go off. The cell moved on to the northeast and I attempted to follow it north on highway 71 before tracking it east along 52. The storm was first reported moving about 40 mph to the northeast, although the later report had it moving at about 60 mph. Angie informed me that it was already 2 to 3 counties away, continuing along it's clip. So Angie observed a couple of rather weak cells which I could possibly catch up with at Kansas City. By the time I had arrived there, those cells had weakened further. I chose then to head south for Wichita. A few more moved in, but eventually diminished as well, long before I got to them.

I headed south for Norman, ready to call it a day, but I was able to intercept a cell moving through Crawford and Cherokee counties in SE Kansas and get some lightening video. As I was filming it, a tornado warning was issued. The cell continued to head east, but without radar, I made my way back in the direction of I-35. A few new cells had popped up from the various outflow boundaries. I got a few more lightening pictures in then arrived back in Norman just after 1am.

I will say this was a successful chase. I didn't actually see a tornado, but I did manage to get on the one cell that produced several tornadoes, lasted 17 hours, and made it's way up to Michigan. My still camera wasn't cooperating, but I got some of this storm's early footage.

**If anyone got on this storm when it produced the tornado and was able to get a good picture of it, I'd really appreciate it if I could get a copy of it! Please e-mail or reply... thanks!!!

Much thanks to Angie Norris for her quick-thinking nowcasting assistance!!

[Tony Cook]

Departed Springfield, MO about 11 a.m, and entered SE KS on hwy 160. As I was driving N on Hwy 69 towards Fort Scott, one of the initial SE KS cells generated a tornado warning. I went West on 54 from Fort Scott to intercept this cell.

Saw numerous brief funnels as the cell approached from the SW, near Uniontown/Redfield in Bourbon county, KS. This pic was taken, looking SW, around 2:20p.m. CST.

http://home.austin.rr.com/evilolive/images/preFunnel.jpg

A low, rotating wall cloud appeared to the NE of these funnels, and crossed 54 just to my West, around 2:25 CST.
http://home.austin.rr.com/evilolive/images/bourbonWall.jpg

The cell quickly raced NE into Missouri, continuing to generate tornado warnings. This photo is looking N, somewhere near the KS/MO border, between Hammond and Stotesbury.
http://home.austin.rr.com/evilolive/images/funnel.jpg

The storm pulled further away from me, and began its prolific tornado production shortly thereafter.

It was nice to meet some ST'ers (Dick M, Tony L, Mike ?, and Darrin- hope I remembered that correctly) at the TESSA conference Saturday morning. Looks like you guys had an eventful Sunday.

Overall, a difficult chase on an amazing day.

TonyC

[Chris Foltz]

What a day yesterday. Just now getting around to posting a report. Myself and 9 fellow Mizzou folks headed west down I-70 stopping at Concordia for data. We were contemplating a run further west to get closer to the dryline but the storms in eastern KS fired up so we headed south on Hwy 13 toward Clinton hoping to intercept them. We were between Warrensburg and Clinton when the first torn warning came out for the storm near Archie/Adrian. Made it to Clinton and blasted up Hwy 7 toward Creighton.

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a199/mizzouwxman2/3-12-06%20Storm%20Chase/MO-7NWofCreightonlookingwest4.jpg

Storm quickly moved north and the southern storm went torn warned heading right for Clinton so we flipped around and made it to Clinton in time to watch a beautiful wall cloud form. Inflow on this thing was unreal.

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a199/mizzouwxman2/3-12-06%20Storm%20Chase/OrganizedwallcloudwestofClinton.jpg

Rotation started to go crazy so we made our way to Hwy 52 which runs northeast out of Clinton. As we were taking the exit, the rotation was almost on top of us but wasn't showing signs of dropping down. Made it to about 2 miles east of Calhoun when the storm dropped a weak torn. Never had a full condensation funnel but did have obvious ground circulation and some structural debris at one point. Here are a few pics of it.

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a199/mizzouwxman2/3-12-06%20Storm%20Chase/Groundcirculation2EofCalhounonHwy52.jpg

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a199/mizzouwxman2/3-12-06%20Storm%20Chase/Tornado2EofCalhounonHwy521.jpg

Think Mickey Ptak and Michael Gribble must have been either right behind us or right in front of us judging by their pics.

Tried to stay up with the storm but got caught behind slow traffic in Windsor. Were never able to completely catch up but did catch the wall cloud that put down the deadly torn south of Sedalia. Here's a pic of the wall cloud crossing Hwy 52 southwest of Green Ridge as well as one of some tree damage. There was also structural damage to a couple of metal barns but wasn't able to grab a pic of that with the digital.

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a199/mizzouwxman2/3-12-06%20Storm%20Chase/Betterdefinedrotatingwallcloud.jpg

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a199/mizzouwxman2/3-12-06%20Storm%20Chase/TreedamagenorthsideofHwy522mileswes.jpg

We chose to break off our chase shortly after this due to major hail on the north side of COU which damaged cars of several met. students including one which had the back window completely shattered.

Arm chair chased the storms that Dick and Darin managed to catch after dark. Having been in this part of MO all but 3 years of my life, I had no interest trying to chase those beasts. Sad to hear of the lives lost and the tremendous damage paths left behind. NWS will have their hands full this week completing the damage surveys. I'm ready for a break...

[Dan Chaffee]

To make a short story shorter, I decided make an attempt at
an intercept of the show moving into W Mo. I left KC 1:30 CST
and chose to leave behind the warned cell moving into
the KC city limits and the nasty aspects of chasing in the metro
area. It was obvious within an hour that all I could hope for
would be distant west flank structure views of what was to become the
marathon dynamo as it entered Pettis Co Mo. Here's what it looked
like about 20 minutes prior to its dirty work in Sedalia.

Dan Chaffee
Parkville, Mo
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2006-3/1158513/pettisco.JPG

[Andy Kula]

This link is to a radar loop of the life cycle of the long track supercell that affected much of the Missouri Valley. Pretty nice as it includes warnings and LSRs as they come in.

http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cases/060312/supercell/

Andy

[Caleb Witt-Schulte]

The day started out with me and my chase partner Bret Parrigon meeting up and sitting in Mt. Vernon, MO in South West MO for a while. Then I believe around 6 p.m. we headed out toward SE Kansas where we sat near Columbus and watched a lot of lightning as the storms finally began to become more organized. We then noticed cells were beginning to fire in NE Oklahoma and decided to head toward Joplin to try and get in position to intercept them. Next thing we know there is a tornado warning out for the cell in NE Oklahoma, I believe Deleware county and the cell was beginning to move into McDonald county, MO.

We then started heading toward Neosho, MO in SW MO where we pretty much let the core go over us with only a few minutes of penny to nickel size hail around 9:07 p.m. The first possible tornado we seen near Neosho at 9:21 p.m. We followed Highway 60 to around Granby and still seen a nice wall cloud with funnels every so often. Around 9:51 p.m. we then seen a funnel near the Monett airport that was heading straight for Monett. Amazingly enough it never did touch down anywhere in Monett, because if it had it would have been very devastating. Next, we proceeded on Hwy 60 still toward Verona and Aurora where we continued to see funnels with this wall cloud. As we got E of Aurora we began to see what looked to be a possible tornado.

Then we got just east of Marionville later on and continued to see what looked to be a large tornado to the NE of us around 10:17 p.m. and of course the radar was not working for me right now either. Then come to find out later we were probably within a mile of the tornado as it was crossing Highway 60 in front of us, which we never did see, though my video did begin to get all distorted around then for some reason too, really not sure why that happened. A minute later we almost run into a large tree that was laying on the highway and weave around it as emergency services arrive. As we continue our track toward Billings and Republic we still see a very well defined wall cloud with a tornado around what seems to be Clever. Next, we had to stop in Republic to get fuel, because of course I decided for once not to fill up with gas that day. This causes us to get a little bit further behind the storm, though we are still able to see the well defined wall cloud with what appears the tornado to the SE of us from Hwy 60 in Republic.

We kept following Hwy 60 as the storm began to get further north of the highway. We then seen another tornado near Fordland, MO at 11:09 p.m. as we continued on toward Seymour on 60 we kept seeing the tornado and also seen it become a much larger wedge tornado as it got near Diggins and Seymour!! Here we even seen what appeared to be a satellite tornado going to the west around the meso. All in all it was a great chase for night, though could have used even more lightning. It was also pretty neat getting to see the moon shining on the top of the storm as we followed it. A great chase and hopefully more to come :)

[PeteMcConnell]

It started to become obvious that the High Risk would hold true when I left home(Hastings Nebraska), at 7a.m. Sunday morning and there was a severe thunderstorm watch issued for Hastings and the surrounding area, which wasn't "supposed" to get any severe weather that day. After heading east on I80 toward Omaha for 45 minutes I saw a number of car accidents resulting from people sliding off the highway due to an inch deep layer of hail. I met up with Scott Olson in Council Bluffs at @ 10a.m. and proceeded to an initial target of St. Joseph Mo. We met up with Tim Blaco who lives in the K.C. Mo. area. Tornadic storms were already firing in the area so we decided to try to start intercepting some of them. This began a day-long effort of being the "chased" instead of the chasers. Our best visible features were seen after dark @ 8p.m. when we were at a medical complex in Cameron Mo. off of I35. The wind and rain were swirling and tornado sirens were sounding. Some rather brave law enforcement personnel appeared to be directing northbound I35 traffic up the off-ramp to "safety". When the rain passed Scott Olson and I stood in the dark looking to the west sky when a bolt of lightning illuminated a massive vault-like lowering. The tornado sirens started to roar once again. This would have been a lot easier to see in the daylight. I will try to upload a shot or two of this ominous lowering. Congrats to everyone who witnessed tornadoes on Sunday.

[Evan Bookbinder]

As I'm sure many of you know, I was one of the primary warning forecasters on Sunday. Words cannot describe this event from how it unfolded in real-time, having to deal with 4 rounds of severe weather the same day (including the effect on your OWN house/family), and then seeing the aftermath on the surveys.

Not that there was ever an option, but I'm glad that I was at the NWS versus in the field. Chasing 50-60 mph supercells on our road network would have been frustrating to say the least.

It appears that many folks were able to successfully take on that challenge, and I wanted to say that we GREATLY appreciate all the wonderful calls, emails, and reports we've received from the chaser community. The discussions and pictures here are just amazing.

If anyone would like to share pictures and especially video from central and northwest Missouri on Sunday, please shoot me an email (Evan.Bookbinder@noaa.gov). We would be delighted to have you out to the office to share your information, or feel free just to email your accounts and images/video. There are some great photos here from within our county warning area...if the authors have exact times/locations, we'd greatly appreciate it. From the looks of it, there are a number of brief touchdowns that have not been accounted for by our surveys of storm reports, and we would certainly like to document everything to the best possible extent.

A special thanks for the very detailed write up from Brian Stertz on behalf of his crew and "Service J".

Our thoughts are certainly with those families who lost their homes and/or loved ones.

Best,
Evan Bookbinder
Senior Meteorologist
NWS Pleasant Hill, MO

[joelawton]

After being slightly dissapointed in the lack of storms in the early afternoon hours (at least south of I-70), I decided to base out of Jefferson City and go from there. Ended up in Columbia just after dark, stayed on the north side trying to catch a little action from the two cells that were moving NE, one towards Moberly. Didn't get much on camera from that one, so I repositioned and focused on the next one moving in. Lightning wasn't very defined (mostly IC or rain-wrapped crawlers) tho I did get this pic. Just looking in person I didn't see all the detail and I don't have very many other shots to put in reference, but it looks like a little bit of a lowering is forming in that rain-free base, which would of been the angle I was looking at.

[attachmentid=4]

Since I couldn't tell if there was rotation or not, I decided to head south towards Jeff.City. At the edge of the city limits I thought I heard the sirents go off, but decided due to limited knowledge of the immediate area, to keep going...only to drive into a strong storm cell (strong cross-winds while driving, heavy rain and some wicked lightning). Then, the tail of that storm developed rotation and the tornado sirens went off there as well. Only difference is I had no visibility looking that direction, so I decided to play it safe, call no-joy and head out of there asap.

Upon returning to home (Owensville area), shortly after we had our final tornado warning but it dissipated before arriving here. All in all a very interesting evening! No damage here at home thankfully.

Joe Lawton
Owensville, MO
Spotter M07374
www.joelawtonphoto.com

[Aaron Kennedy]

Went on a brief "chase" when storms seemed likely to initiate near OUN. Sat in Tecumsah for awhile watching turkey towers, but then the field dimishined near sunset. Gave up and started to head home (only 30mi). Neared Lake Thunderbird and did an "oh ****" when I saw the following in the rearview mirror. Gave up any hope of chasing this storm. Eventually, it went on to produce the tornadoes in NE OK and AR.

http://www.convectionconnection.com/STORM-031306/

http://ww2.convectionconnection.com:8080/STORM-031306/img_9946_std.jpg

Aaron

[Wayne Sclesky]

March 12, 2006

My chase day started in Miami Florida on March 11th at 3:00PM. Well it really wasn’t a chase day, I was moving back to Kansas City. I had spent the last year in Miami doing beauty and fashion photography. Got tired of Miami and decided to head back to the Central U.S. I stopped in Murfreesboro, TN at 5:00am on the 12th. When I arrived at the motel and connected my laptop to their WiFi and got the day 1 out look I knew the drive the rest of the way might get rough. Right through a good portion of the area I had to pass through to get to KC was the elusive “high-risk” circle. I was going to sleep in, but decided I should leave at 8:30am and try to beat any storms that were going to fire up.

I woke up at 8:00am on the 12th. I checked the SPC page, noticing their warnings in the KC area, I called my Mom and girlfriend to warn them of the impending storms. I hopped in the car and got headed to KC.

Most of the drive was very uneventful. As I got the Saint Louis area I started paying more attention to the skies. Through my Sprint PCS I can get access to radar and some forecasting data through “My-Cast”. Pretty handy to have as long as I can get a signal. As I was about 30 miles from Columbia I noticed the first couple of cells that were heading up through Sedalia and would be coming close to Columbia or Boonville. Not having any maps to navigate with or my weather radio I thought it would be best to stop at a friends in Columbia, wait for the storms to pass over I-70 then continue on to KC.

I got to my friends and pulled up the NWS radar and started watching TV to get storm information. From the radar and looking at the SRV it looked like the current areas of rotation would pass to the west of Columbia, however the media was projecting the storms to head right to Columbia. My friend had no basement and had just left for church. I sat there for a few minutes and the storm chaser in me took hold. Better to chase than be chased!

I left his residence, which is on the west side of Columbia. I made my way to Highway 63 and proceeded south to get into a better viewing position. I took my first images at exactly 5:10PM. I observed a large wedge tornado that appeared to be weak. The only reason it was visible was due to the rain forming the wedge shape. This persisted for about 30 seconds before dissipating or being occluded from precipitation. I watched several updrafts turn slightly, but no organized rotation that I would call a “well-defined” wall cloud.

http://www.tornadophotography.com/post/031206_columbia01.jpg

http://www.tornadophotography.com/post/031206_columbia02.jpg

As soon as the storm was clear I proceeded north on 63 to I-70. Remember I wasn’t chasing, I was trying to get home. And actually I was going to surprise my girlfriend by getting back to KC a day earlier than I told her. Up to this point I was telling her I was in Georgia and not anywhere near the mess I was about to really get in. I got onto I-70 and proceeded West. After crossing the Lamine River about mile Marker 90 I came to a huge traffic jam. I spent most of my time sitting and it took me at least an hour to go about a mile. Traffic was being detoured onto county road AE to J hwy, then back onto I-70. I will assume the traffic backup was related to the first storms crossing over the interstate. Now, however there were more storms approaching the interstate with current tornado warnings. As I got to J hwy. and I-70 I was on the phone with my brother having him give me some now-casting and try to get me down I-70 without running into a tornado or large hail. All the while I would intermittently talk to my girlfriend acting like I was stuck in a traffic jam in Georgia! We decided I should head to the clover leaf at I-70 and 65 hwy and reassess the situation. Once I got to that point and reassessed, it was decided that it wouldn’t be a good idea to proceed down I-70. The hook from the storm was running along I-70 and was headed towards my location.

I decided to head back to J highway and I-70. If need be I could go south on J to 65 highway, or get back on to I-70 once the storm had cleared. As I sat on the south side of I-70, I was being hit by massive inflow, through the lightning flashes I could see a large wedge tornado working its way to my northwest. My guess is it was about 1-2 miles from my location. My brother thought it would be best for me to head South on J and hit 65 hwy a few miles south of I-70 and then proceed back north to I-70. That is exactly what I did. I was very relieved to get onto I-70. It was at this time I had to tell my girlfriend about how I was going to surprise her, but I was concerned for my safety and wanted her to know I was almost there. More storms were approaching from the Southwest and I knew I had to keep things moving to get west before I ran into them crossing the interstate. Just when I was thinking things were looking good…once again…traffic jam!

http://www.tornadophotography.com/post/031206_night01.jpg
this was shot at 3200 ISO on my Canon 5d handheld at 2.5 seconds from in my car!

For at least 20 minutes there was no movement whatsoever of the traffic. There is no worse feeling than knowing that in a few minutes I might find myself in a ditch hoping for the best! Of course another storm was headed right towards my location with a current tornado warning. Slowly traffic got moving. This time the wreck was from a semi that had been flipped over onto a couple of cars that were parked under an overpass. This was from the tornado that I had just witnessed a few minutes before. If I would have proceeded instead of waiting when I did back at J highway and I-70…I know that I would have been in that mess or very close.

After the last traffic jam there was only one more storm to beat before I was finally in the clear, it was once I got past 13hwy and I-70 that my brother said that I am finally in the clear. That was a great feeling of relief. It took me 5 hours to drive 90 miles. If it were not for the traffic backups on the interstate I would have been fine, and perhaps would have even stopped to get some better photos. I have been thinking about getting wxworx system, after this event, I am thinking even more about it!

[Sean McMullen]

I was chasing sunday with my fiance Katie along with Jeff and Kathy Piotrowski. We began the day by chasing the "quad state supercells" all the way to about 40-50 miles east of Columbia, MO. Along the way we did get a couple nice tornadoes but what I would like to report on are the huge wedge night time tornadoes we chased after being stuck on I-70 for hours and watching the storms head right at us on radar that had developed on the KS, MO border. We just happened to get around the destruction on I-70 to witness two tornadoes just to the north of I-70 in a feild, one small, one huge! :blink: we followed them on Hwy 65 north of I-70, and then both Jeff and I's XM went down, did anyone else run into this problem? Beleive it or not we then headed south on Hwy 65 south of I-70 and intercepted another gigantic wedge tornado heading right for us! :blink: I was able to get pictures of them all due to relentless amount of lightning and powerflashes. Here is a link to where you can see them. Kathy was nice enough to post my pics ( by the way they were all vid grabs) on her website since I don't have my own website. You can also go to her website to see her chase log and pictures as well.

These will be my first pictures I've posted on ST by the way, ENJOY!

http://www.twisterchasers.com/tornadoes_at...htm#Sean%20Post (http://www.twisterchasers.com/tornadoes_at_night.htm#Sean%20Post)

http://www.twisterchasers.com/2006_storm_c..._highlights.htm (http://www.twisterchasers.com/2006_storm_chase_highlights.htm)

[Shane Reichert]

My first real chase and I saw a tornado!! It was pretty exciting but I also scared the crap out of myself. More on that later. The only chasing I had done before this was anything local. I'm just starting to get into the whole idea and learning lots.

I didn't leave here, Springfield MO, until about 1 pm. I didn't even have a power inverter to power my laptop or vid camera, so I stopped by walmart on the way out. I checked radar and decided to head toward Clinton, MO. I tried to check radar along the way there but couldn't find any wifi spots so was just hoping the storms I targeted held their course. Once in Clinton, I got gas, food, and checked radar again. I decided to head a little farther north up to Warrensburg. Just as I left Clinton, it became tornado warned. I thought about heading back but knew I could intercept the two cells as they headed northeast.

Once in Warrensburg I headed east on highway 50 towards Sedalia. As I reached Sedalia I heard on the radio there was a 1/2 mile wide tornado spotted south on 65. I was right in the middle of town, being pounded with hail, and couldn't see anything. To be honest, I was pretty damn scared the tornado would come from the south and nail me from the side. I even stopped at a gas station to take shelter, but the door was locked. I decided to just keep going hoping we woulnd't intercept paths. This actually turned out to be in my favor because I would see the tornado just as it was lifting just to the east of town.

As I headed out the east side of town I first saw a nice rainbow, then there it was: my first tornado. At the time I wasn't even excited. I was just relieved to know where the tornado was instead of driving blind through rain and hail. I saw it for maybe 30 seconds before it dissapeared. I tried catching up as it moved toward Columbia but was moving too fast.

Here is part of the video: http://www.theawesomecontest.com/shane/sedaliatornado412.mov

[Scott Currens]

March 12, 2006 will defiantly go as one of my most memorable chases. The day started with a 2:00 am forecast before I left for work. I decided to go ahead and give it a shot despite the 90+ kt 500mb winds. My plan was simple, get on a good road in front of a supercell and use it to observe/avoid the tornado as it goes flying by.

At around 10 AM the remnants of the Lawrence baseball hail producing supercell crossed the warmfront and dumped pea to marble sized hail on MCI while I was working.

When I got off work at 12:40 pm a string of supercells had developed along the dryline from south of Lawrence trailing SSW into SE Kansas. I targeted the northern most cell as it entered the KC metro area. When this cell approached it looked ragged and outflow dominant so I quickly dropped south and east to a major supercell south of Harrisonville, MO. This cell looked impressive on radar but not so good in person. It was also ragged and HP. I wasn’t interested in trying to punch the rain curtains to see what was in there so once again I dropped south and east to the next supercell.

This next supercell was the Monster that produced more than 20 tornadoes as it raced from SE Kansas all the way to Michigan. Unfortunately, it didn’t look all that great when I was in perfect position to view the storm near Butler, MO. Its updraft base was ragged and disorganized, and its updraft was leaned over at a 45-degree angle. This storm was tail-end-charley so I tried my hardest to stay with it as long as possible.

http://www.violentplains.com/Pictures/20060312_01.JPG
I lucked out because the storm rapidly became organized as it followed a SW-NE road from Clinton to Windsor. I observed a well-defined funnel from 3:50 to 4:03 PM near Windsor, MO. A few minutes later I crossed its damage path 4 miles east of Windsor. The damage appeared to be F1 intensity.

http://www.violentplains.com/Pictures/20060312_03.JPG
http://www.violentplains.com/Pictures/20060312_04.JPG
My SW-NE road now turned to the east so I started to fall further behind the storm. At the same time, a new or previously obscured tornado became visible to the north near Green Ridge, MO.

http://www.violentplains.com/Pictures/20060312_05.JPG
As the supercell and I approached Sedalia, MO its storm scale rotation was violent. I was about 4 miles south of the tornado as it crossed 65 on the south side of Sedalia. I crossed the tornados damage 1 ½ miles south of Sedalia and was surprised by how weak it was. It produced only F0-F1 damage along a narrow path. ½ mile later I found out that was just a satellite tornado. The real damage track was 1/3 to ½ mile wide with F2 like damage to some businesses and trees. The tornado was now moving into more populated areas of Sedalia and I didn’t want to get in the way of emergency personnel, so I let that tornado go, and tried to flank the storm by going north to I-70 and east to Columbia. I meet up with the Piotrowski’s on I-70 as we were trying to beat the storm to Columbia. This strategy failed because tornadoes associated with another supercell had crossed I-70 less than an hour before. People were parked under overpasses inches off the road with cars whizzing by in heavy rain at 70+ MPH. For the life of me I don’t understand how people think this is a way to protect their families. Eventually I reached Columbia at 5:35 PM well behind my target supercell and decided to call it a day.

My route home, I-70 westbound was closed because of tornado damaged vehicles in the roadway. I had to find an alternate route home. I tried to take a state road that weaves its way from Lamine, MO to Marshall, MO. This route was blocked 2 miles east of Blackwater, MO by what appeared to be a significant tornado’s damage swath. At 7:30 PM I was forced to take muddy bob’s roads in an effort to get around this damage path. LOL! Did I forget to mention that another violent tornadic supercell was racing towards me a 45 MPH? Luckily, I made it back to pavement and proceeded to a point 5 miles WNW of Arrow Rock, MO.

http://www.violentplains.com/Pictures/20060312_07.JPG
This area was on high ground and had few trees so I decided to take some lightning stills and watch for the approaching tornado.

At 8:29 PM I could make out a large blocky wallcloud/tornado scraping the ground to the WSW. At the same time golf ball hail began falling so I repositioned ESE 1 mile. At 8:35 I was on the phone with the KC NWS office reporting the hail and wallcloud to my west when I observed another tornado developing close by.
http://www.mesoscale.ws/pic2004/040612-3.jpg It looked a lot like this one, but at night, and moving much faster. LOL!

With the NWS still on the phone I reported the new tornado while repositioning further east.

http://www.violentplains.com/Pictures/20060312_08.jpg
A new tornado then appeared a ½ mile to the south of the main tornado then quickly disappeared from view. I believe this was a satellite tornado. (I'm not so sure now. The NWS talks about two simultaneous tornadoes with parallel damage tracks that eventually merge and cause F3 damage.)

http://www.violentplains.com/Pictures/20060312_09.jpg
The main tornado continued ENE for 12 minutes before I lost sight of it. I then turned around and headed west. I crossed a narrow swath of F0-F1 damage associated with the satellite tornado. ½ mile later crossed a ¼ wide damage swath. Two houses received what looked like F2 damage. I then called NWS and report the damage.

www.violentplains.com/2006 (http://)

Scott Currens
www.violentplains.com (http://)

[Joey Ketcham]

Here is a clip I uploaded of the wall cloud from Montgomery County on Sunday, I sped it up to 500% to make the rotation more visible.

http://www.kschaser.com/wallcloud.wmv

[Mike Hardiman]

Hi Folks,

Like Evan Bookbinder, I was also working the event over here in Central Illinois, and have been involved with the damage surveys out this way. There's been some challenges with trying to reconstruct damage paths... especially in Southeastern Logan County south of Mount Pulaski and Cornland.

This may be a long shot, but if there were any chasers on the storm beyond (Northeast) of Springfield, any info, video, etc you could share would be appreciated.

Also, by reading the earlier topics, it seems like there were at least a handful of chasers who saw the tornado as it moved into the southwest side of Springfield as it crossed I-72. So far, we haven't heard of any video of images, but if there are any you could share, we would certainly appreciate it.

This will be a memorable event in Central Illinois, and already we've had numerous requests for more spotter talks over the past few days. I imagine we'll see an increase in turnout for the remaining classes this year. Some degree of silver lining, I suppose.

My work email is mike.hardiman@noaa.gov ...

-Mike

[Mike Hollingshead]

http://www.extremeinstability.com/stormpics/2006/06-3-12-5238b.jpg
Supercell crossing into MO near Amoret MO. This was the one just north of the southern supercell of supercells.

http://www.extremeinstability.com/stormpics/2006/06-3-12-5242b.jpg
The mother of all supercells as it crossed into MO. I'm just outside of Rich Hill MO.

I really never tried to keep after either of them very hard. I went east and it was obvious it would be an extreme challenge to stay with them. I knew I wanted to give the storms some time before I was on them this day, but evidently this was not enough time for them.

http://www.extremeinstability.com/stormpics/2006/06-3-12-19.jpg
Hail from the night supercell that went over Concordia MO. I was sitting in its path before deciding to flee north out of the way. I dropped back south to where I was to pick those up.

http://www.extremeinstability.com/stormpics/2006/06-3-12-sedalia-comp.jpg

I have a bunch more pictures and words on my site, including several radar grabs. Here is one I made that I think is crazy. It's the same map with one radar grab during the day and one at night near Sedalia showing how close those 4 supercells tracked. The storm gods were really after that area.

More info/images here: March 12, 2006 (http://www.extremeinstability.com/06-3-12.htm)

[Lisa Wadlow]

This is a long report as I chased 3 storms over the course of 10 hours.

First of all, thanks to Dan Robinson for his excellent nowcasting for this day.

Eolia, MO chase:
After having been up most of the night I slept late and didn’t start my chase until about 5:00pm. I headed north out of STL to intercept the supercell headed towards Bowling Green. Dan said the storm was going to cross a bit south of there and recommended I go just a couple of miles north of the Pike county line near Eolia and watch the meso pass just north of there. Well, I went about 1 mile farther north than he said (big mistake). I could see the rain free base to my west and thought I was far enough south. It was dusk and I was losing light quickly. I didn’t realize my mistake until I saw the lowering w/3 cone shaped fingers flying towards me from my west/southwest. If it had been daytime I would have assessed the grassy median separating me from the south bound lanes and if possible crossed it and flew south but in the low light I could not have done that. My 2 options were: 1. stay were I was and let it pass over me, or 2. fly north and try to get out of the meso on the north side. I was not thrilled with the idea of flying north but I was even less thrilled with the idea of being a sitting duck so I floored it to go north. Just a little bit north I cleared a tree line and saw a very large lowering about ¾ of the way to the ground crossing the highway about 30 yards in front of me. I thought I may witness a tragedy since people were driving right under that lowering oblivious to the extreme danger they were in. As it moved east (it was at least ¼ mile wide) I headed north but had to pull over since the RFD started blowing me off the road. Beautiful RFD though. Very wide clear slot and the moonlight was shining through it so the towers north and south of me were illuminated by moonlight while I saw clear sky above me. I attempted to catch the cell again in IL but it was moving too fast for me to catch up with so I headed back down Hwy 61 towards STL. As I neared the 61/70 interchange I heard on the radio that some storms were headed toward Columbia and I wasn’t ready to call it a night yet so I pulled into a gas station to get some caffeine. To my pleasant discovery a DOW belonging to the NBC station in STL was there so I took a couple of pics of it, called Dan for an update and fueled up on caffeine.

Jonesburg, MO chase:
My target was the area between Columbia and Jefferson City off hwy 54 but Dan said the cell was right turning and had me move back east a few miles. As it continued to right turn more I kept moving east a few miles at a time. I had pulled off near High Hill and had a great view of the rain free base but felt I was too close to the pathway of a funnel so I went a few more miles east to Jonesburg. The storm crossed hwy 70 to the west of me so I headed north to get a better view. I could see the base and RFD. I saw a wall of black movement and heard some roaring but I dismissed it as just being some intense rain and wind since the traffic on 70 made it difficult to hear anything. Going a bit further north I was able to see a WC to my right and ran across some minor tree debris in the road. I stopped to watch the storm but then saw headlights coming up the road behind me so I drove about 10 yards north and turned onto a side road. The lightning was almost constant so every couple of seconds I had a great view of the action. The people who lived at the house with the tree debris came into their front yard and were freaking out and wandering all over with flashlights. Then they drove to the end of the side road I was on to check on their neighbors. I was thinking they were totally overacting since I thought they just got a little rain and wind and a high funnel, so what’s the big deal, they were panicked over nothing. I only saw a little bit of wind damage in their yard and didn’t see anything across the road at their neighbor’s. Disorganized funnels kept lowering then dissipating until one very well defined cone funnel lowered. The portion of the funnel that was visible went about ½ way to the ground. There was a tree line about ½ mile away that blocked my view of the ground so I could not tell if there was rotation at ground level. Dan called it in to the NWS. The funnel only lasted about 20 seconds. Then it went back to the cycle of producing short disorganized looking funnels then dissipating them. A guy in a red sports car pulled up next to me and asked “did a funnel just cross over here, I saw it from the highway?” I was losing visibility as the storm moved east so I told him I was heading east and ran to my car. I went back to 70 then to route A and headed north. From there I had again a great view. At one point the WC was very wide and lowered into a large upside down triangle shape and was about 1/2 way to the ground. Then it would rise back up. I should have stayed right where I was and enjoyed the show and tried to get some pics but I was greedy to keep chasing it so I headed north on A and ended up losing it in the hills and trees. I went back to hwy 70 to head towards STL hoping to intercept the cell that was headed there from Rolla.

Troy/Silex, MO chase:
When I reached Wentzville I heard a tor warning on NOAA radio for the Troy area so I called Dan for an update. He said go north of Troy so I did but my phone battery was depleted and I lost contact with him. I entered precip so I turned back since I didn’t want to be “blind” in a storm. Probably was a good call since a touchdown was confirmed in Silex just north of where I stopped.

After returning home I heard a tor had touched down in Jonesburg and I was surprised since I thought it was just funnels there. I was even more surprised the next day when I saw aerial photos a news station had taken. There was not only a touchdown but major damage. I live 45 minutes from there so after work yesterday I drove out there as I was curious how close I was to the touchdown. Major findings from yesterday:

1. The tor was on the ground when it crossed hwy 70. The pavement is ok but a street sign on the south side was bent in half and the field on the right side has a scour path.
2. When I was in Jonesburg watching the storm NW/N of me and assumed I was seeing and hearing wind and rain I was actually seeing and hearing the tor as it passed about ¾ a mile in front of me.
3. When I drove north and passed the “tree debris house” if I had turned my brights on or driven another 20 yards north I would have seen a demolished house covering the road.
4. When I turned on to the small side road and watched the funnels come and go across the field if I had looked 30 yards to my left I would have seen about 10 tractor trailers strewn about the field like Tonka toys.
5. I realize now why the people in the “tree debris house” were freaking out and checking on their neighbors. Their house was just nicked by the tor. Their neighbor’s house was demolished. I’m not a damage expert but I’d say it was an F2/F3.

I feel a bit like a heel for not stopping and helping the people on that street but I had no idea I was just yards away from a major damage path. It was in the middle of the night and all the electric was out. Also, I wasn’t focusing on ground level but was looking up at the sky. If I had any clue the tor had just hit there I would have checked to make sure everyone in the damaged homes were ok.