Departed Monroe, LA with Cooper at 9:30pm Friday to set up for what we anticipated was going to be a big day for supercells and tornadoes across northern Mississippi. We staged in Greenville, MS on Friday night and departed for our first high risk chase at 6am. At this particular time, convection was already occurring across northern LA into southeast AR but we decided to head east toward I-55 instead. At this point, storm initiation was occurring well the south of our location around the southeast LA/MS border and to our west along the I-20 corridor in LA. Taking this into consideration, we decided to drive south on I-55 toward Yazoo City where we staged and rested for a while.
After taking a look at the morning sounding from the NWS in Jackson, the latest RUC, and surface and upper air charts, we decided that it was best to reposition further north, therefore we began moving north on Hwy 49W toward Belzoni, a town with major road options in all directions. However, around 10:30AM, Cooper and I observed a pair of storms in Northeastern LA that we felt had potential to go severe. Therefore we decided to turn around and head south on 49W, before cutting across State Hwy 149 and 14 to get to US 61 in the town of Anguilla.
Around this time, the southernmost cell became supercellular and was warned on by the NWS in Jackson. We flew south on 61 in an attempt to get south of it, and managed to get to the town of Valley Park about 10 minutes before the tornado was forecasted to hit. Around this time, we experienced a complete failure of radar on the computer and I-Phone (GR Level 3 & Radarscope). After several intense minutes of contemplation, I decided to call several people for nowcasting. I was fortunate to get in touch with Christopher Barber, a fellow NELA Skywarn storm spotter. Using some exceptional nowcasting by him, as well as my own visual skill, Cooper and I managed to get about a mile south of the tornado’s path just as it approached the highway.
Around the same time we set up to observe the tornado, another chaser, Andy Pettis parked behind us and informed us that there was damage done in Eagle Bend, MS. Using the brief window of time we had before we were slammed by RFD, I managed to identify the tornado and captured several pictures of it crossing US-61. Afterward, I followed Eddie to the Eagle Bend community to assist with search and rescue efforts and to conduct damage surveys. This is how the rest of the day would be spent across northwest Mississippi.
Special thanks goes out to Christopher Barber for his excellent nowcasting while we were under the gun, Dylan Cooper for a good job navigating and nowcasting, and Don Wheeler for teaching me a lot of what I know about storm chasing. It took me roughly 13 months for me to catch my first tornado. I never thought it would be a historic EF-4 long track tornado on a high risk day in Mississippi. This tornado stayed on the ground for almost three hours and a total of 149.26 miles and was one of two EF-4 tornadoes on this day. There were total of 56 tornadoes across Dixie Alley on that day. Sadly, 12 lives were claimed by this powerful force of nature.
Long track supercell and tornado crossing US-61.
I am currently monitoring the progress of our next major weather maker. I will begin to assess and compare model runs tomorrow to begin making forecasts for a possible 2 day (Friday, Saturday) event across East Texas and Dixie Alley this weekend.