March 10th 2010 Chase Log

The day started out with me being skeptical anything would happen severe weather wise, so off to school I went. When I got home at 10am though, I saw everyone asking me excitedly if we were going to chase today. As a new chaser...that perks your ears up a bit and I started checking the computer models. Sure enough they were showing a good amount of CAPE (1000j/kg or higher), fairly good moisture return, and good low level hodographs. Once I saw those...we needed to get going ASAP. In 20 minutes I was ready and out the door.

Our original target area was West Plains, MO mostly due to distance. I didn't think we could get any further quick enough. As we drove through St. Louis I rechecked initiation time the models were depicting and sure enough...it was a late initiation. If we stayed in West Plains, MO it would be as late at 10pm before severe storms rolled through. To have any chance of seeing tornadic storms in daylight, we would have to shift west. I changed our target area to Springfield, MO

We arrived in Springfield, MO around 530pm with initiation most likely going to occur around 6 or 630pm. I got the chase vehicle fueled up and we paused for some food and drinks. As we were sitting on the west side of Springfield, MO, I could see a line of showers beginning to intensify as they entered MO. My first mistake was made here...I sat at our spot for too long! Even when they became severe thunderstorm warned, I still waited. I wish I hadn't. Once it became tornado warned, we started heading west to intercept it. Much to our shigrin, 20 minutes away from a storm other storm chasers began telling me they had a tornado on the ground. By the time we arrive to the storm around 7pm, the first tornado has already dissipated.

One thing was for sure though, another tornado was definably possible. As we approached, we could see a very well defined wall cloud over the interstate, with the storm moving NNE. We get off on the Stotts City exit and head north to watch it. Around 7:15pm we stopped at a junction between two state highways and waited. It was at this point we could see a fair amount of rotation and could see the RFD trying to wrap in to form a tornado. My second mistake was made here...I didn't move further north! Although we saw a good amount of rotation, I was reluctant to move any further north due to unfamiliar territory and nighttime quickly approaching. As we watch to our northwest, law enforcement in a nearby town reported a tornado on the ground (730pm). It was at 7:32pm on my video camera a tornado may have been caught behind some trees in the distance. Had I moved further north, we would have seen it much clearer! All in all...we didn't chase much longer with it getting dark so we began to head back home

Although a tornado on video is still up in the air at this point, our video camera shows its fairly certain we had one. And even if we didn't get the tornado law enforcement reported, it was still a completely successful chase! We saw some amazing structure. I can't wait for our next chase!