News DetailWe finally captured a tornado in the Arkansas Ozarks!
Posted At: September 23, 2006 @ 4:35 AM
Posted By: Reed Timmer
Related Categories: Tornadoes
As of early Saturday morning, 37 tornadoes have been reported across MO, AR, IL, AL, TN, and KY!
We began our chase during this historic tornado outbreak in Springfield, MO, when storms began to fire by late morning in a weakly capped, strongly sheared environment. The first tornado warning was issued to the NNE of Springfield, and the storm was moving at 50+ mph, so we new we had to fly. We gradually caught up with the storm as it continued to gain strength and cycle. The structure on this supercell was TEXTBOOK, and we thought we were definitely going to see a large tornado. Just as we were passing underneath the RFD gustfront a few miles east of Rolla, we encountered a traffic jam! We could see the right edge of an incredible wall cloud only a few miles to our northeast, with a likely tornado barely obscured by the hook rain. If we hadn't encountered this traffic jam, we would have seen a tornado a few minutes later right along the interstate! In immense frustration, we watched this incredible supercell move abruptly away from us as we sat in a traffic jam 2 miles west of St. James, MO, where two damaging tornadoes were reported.
We then decided to head south out of St. James to catch new development in northwest AR later in the afternoon. We battled through motion sickness for 3 hours as we drove south through the heart of the Ozarks towards new convective development to our southwest. As we travelled south through the mountainous terrain, a supercell in north-central AR at the southern end of a broken line of storms caught our attention, so we decided to intercept it. We knew the terrain would make it almost impossible to see a tornado, but we were desperate, and we saw a tornado just west of Ash Flat, AR in the middle of the Ozarks. The structure of this supercell was amazing. Displayed here are some still frames, video, and radar images with our position indicated by the white circle.
Maybe the first F-5 since May 3, 1999????
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FANTASTIc!! What a fucking great September!
WOW. Very nice catch, guys. I have seen the NOAA tornado reports. Lots of damage across the states you have named.
Nice chase! What a great September is right...maybe another chase next week.
one of the only tornadoes Ive seen filmed in the Ozarks... good work! Somehow I dont think thats an F5 tho :)
Wow, that took some skill to get that.... nice!
Nice grab, Reed and Joel, amazing with all the trees and shit. The ONE time we have wxworx it fails us. I need a data card.
Cool photo of the wall cloud. The trees give it great depth. Certainly an outbreak to have the tongues wagging! An amazing number of tornadoes that touched down i see!
Congrats! Looks like the fall might help to salvage this year.