Chase partners: Jennifer Brindley.  Equipment:  Kenwood TH-F6A Tribander, Dell Inspiron Laptop.  Millenicom 760 USB datacard and cradlepoint router, Holux 236 GPS, Robotic camera dome with Sony XR-520V. Canon 60D and EF-S 10-22mm

Photography courtesy: Jennifer Brindley

May 24 was one of the biggest chase days of the year with a tornado outbreak across Oklahoma and Kansas, and I missed it due to work obligations.  Wednesday, May 25, the same system was taking aim at the Mississippi river valley with much of the same dynamics.  I didn't want to miss another potential outbreak and this one was much closer to home, so I was able to get out of work for a day. 

Jennifer Brindley, the pro photographer, was free so we teamed up for the chase.  The setup called for a very moist, strongly destabilized warm sector extending through eastern MO and into IL.  A nearly stacked surface low was forecast to move over Kansas City with a very strong jet streak rounding the base of the trough and ejecting over the Mississippi valley.  Speed shear was going to be incredibly strong, but I was worried that directional shear might be a little lacking with the unidrectional wind profiles that stacked lows usually create.  We could potentially be chasing quasi linear complexes racing at 60 mph through the bad terrain of Missouri.  Forecast helicity was also very high, however, so SPC was forecasting multiple lines of discrete tornadic supercells, issuing a high risk for a potential tornado outbreak.

The Missouri boot heel is flat and treeless and was favorably positioned within the target area, so we targeted SIkeston and points south to intercept one of the lines of supercells that moving through, hoping to let them go at the Mississippi and catch the next line.  Brindley and I headed out from my place early, making our way down 55 toward St. Louis, and then turning southeast on the west side of the river.  We got a text from Jon Williamson, chasing with Adam Lucio, trying to sell us on the northern end of the target up by the warm front.  I didn't want to get caught in the St. Louis metro area, on the river, or in the bad terrain of western IL, and we had an EHI bullseye to work with further south so we stuck to our guns.  We stopped for gas and fast food in Perryville before continuing on.  The skies were soupy and hazy with lots of low cumulus that signaled deep, rich moisture, but in typical high risk setup fashion, often makes for grungy, ground scraping, low contrast storms.

Stopping for gas on the way to our target, Brindley caught some robins nesting on top of a gas pump:

A line of cells started to initiate well west of our original target with dozens of little blips appearing on radar.  I didn't want to head into the jungles of south central Missouri, but it would be hours before the lines pushed east into the better terrain, and I figured we could just drop off the line and head east into the better terrain later, so why not make a play now?  Storms organized fairly rapidly and tornado warnings started to pop up across south central MO.  We exited 55 at Fruitland, making for Jackson, heading northeast on highway 72 toward the line.  The cumulus around us was also towering and we drove through a few showers.  Our highway twisted and winded and it took much longer to make up the straight line distance to the storms than if we were on a straight interstate.

As we headed into Fredrickstown, a cell well to the south went tornado warned and the warning polygon extended all the way up to our position.  The sirens started to wail even though the storm was not yet visible except for a darkening southern horizon.  We tried to get through town as quickly as possible with sporadic traffic driving erratically as the sirens sounded.

Spotter Network reports started to come in from the south so I knew we were missing something.  Given that this was forecast to be a large scale tornado outbreak, however, I hoped there would be more tubes to catch later.  We finished up our race car style pit stop and were back on the highway, heading south out of Fredricktown for the intercept.  We had a nice four lane highway to make good time getting down there, however there were very tall hills lined with trees on either side of the highway: not a welcome sight.  It took us an agonizingly long time to clear the 20 mile gap between Fredricktown and the storm after hitting a construction zone.  Our tornado warned storm was already crossing the highway to our south. 

In order to get a view of a potential tornado, we’d have to core punch.  Brindley and I had a few too many close calls this year with tornadoes emerging through the rain or coming over the tops of hills and trees, so we stopped on the northern flank of the storm’s precipitation core.  I turned the van around and we pulled into a driveway to let the core of the storm pass by to our south.  Once the most dangerous parts of the storm had moved east past the highway, we headed south again, hoping to catch a view on the back side of the storm or pick up an east road to follow from the south. 

Our storm lined out before we could ever get out ahead of it.  I made a vain attempt at some cells to our north but those too quickly lined out.  There were discrete cells coming out of northwest Arkansas so I decided it was finally time to make a play on our original target.  We winded our way through the Missouri roads back to I-55 south making for the boot heel where we could get storms in the flat, treeless river floodplain.

South of Sikeston we found ourselves in a similar position as before, coming in from the north as a supercell crossed the road ahead of us.  As the storm hadn’t produced any tornadoes, and this would probably be our last intercept of the day before the cell crossed the Mississippi, we tried to play a little more aggressively.  We exited near Matthews, planning to head east toward East Prairie as the storm moved northeast, putting us out ahead of the updraft base. 

The floodplains of the Missouri boot heel were indeed flooded from wave after wave of storms that had passed through the area this spring.  Barricades blocked our road, as portions of it were under water up ahead.  With our east road closed, our chase was over.  We had no way to catch the storm before it crossed the Mississippi, and it was the only storm within reach.

We turned around and got back on I-55 heading north and decided to take 57 for a more direct route home.  We stopped for gas before crossing the river, but our storm had passed through the area and the power was out, signs were knocked over, and small debris was scattered on the ground.

Back in Illinois, we clipped a neat looking gust front from some junky linear storms and got a couple of peeks at the sun through some rain curtains before stopping for dinner in Marion. 

We were close to scoring a tornado on this chase, but the timing and terrain was off and we couldn’t pull it off.  This was a missed tornado bust.  It’s disheartening being so close and not having a view of anything, but that’s how chasing goes sometimes, especially when you try to tangle with the jungles of Missouri.  Several other chasers including Nick Nolte and Mike Brady were positioned south of us and were able to get decent views of the tornadoes through the hills.  The storms over the boot heel at our original target were largely quiet in the way of tornadoes, however.

Lessons Learned: 

• Be careful passing storm spooked drivers

• Don’t neglect the fuel gauge