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Tuesday, February 5, 2008 - Western Tennessee Forecasts began to show a major setup for 'Super Tuesday', and that quickly grabbed the attention of storm-starved chasers. I was included among those as the thrill of January's chase had vanished away with a move and new semester. Thinking I was too busy to chase, I almost completely blew it off. But as the weekend drew on and the setup began to look more and more epic, I let my interest surge and began to flirt with the idea of pulling my second fly-and-chase in as many months. I quietly forecasted my way into the decision to make the trip. After wrapping up a 14 hour Monday ending with my brother taking me to the airport at 10pm after a dinner with him and my Grandfather, I was on a 12:35am flight to Atlanta.
My target was declared as Memphis, but I opted the earlier flight into Atlanta as my arrival in Memphis would be almost 2pm local time, and I was thinking early initiation, thus opted to save a couple of hours and make the 400 mile trip from Atlanta to Memphis. My estimated arrival time at noon would give me two hour plus over flying directly in.
A few slots of clearing began to take shape, but the overall sky conditions were overcast through most of Alabama. Skies began to clear some as I continued northwest into Mississippi. By this time, the new outlook had come out moving the high risk area further north and east, putting my Memphis target smack-dab in the middle. Relieved to see forecasts leaning my way, I continued on, arriving in Memphis about noon with one gas/food/and potty stop along the way.
I had a friend in Memphis, and she graciously offered me a place to crash out for an hour as my analysis of the current situation lead me to believe I had some time to kill. With only two hours of sleep since I woke up at 6am Monday morning, I figured an hour nap wouldn't hurt. This was also my way of making sure I didn't microadjust. I had been confident in my Memphis target since Sunday and even though Arkansas was going to see their share of weather, I wanted to stay in what I thought was better terrain and NOT mess with having to cross the river at any point during the chase.
After my hour nap and a quick mesoanalysis, I headed out with my friend on board and decided to flirt with Arkansas. Storms firing south of Memphis made me quickly go against that decision as I wanted to avoid having to cross the river during rush hour (it was approaching 3pm at this point).
As we returned back to Memphis after a 15 minute detour, I took interest in our first storms of the day. A pair of small cells had fired over Memphis and were racing northeast along US Highway 51. We followed the storms to Covington where we broke off as they never really got their act together.
By this point, we were beginning to hear of the beast crossing the Mississippi River. Our GRLevel3 radar was confirming this and indicated the storm was on a crash-course with Memphis. Nowcasts from Verne Carlson were also mentioing this monster. Figuring an interception of about an hour, we elected to drop south out of Covington on TN-59. As we were heading south, new storms exploded right over Memphis, TN. No warnings were issued at this point, but velocity scans were indicating a good area of rotation with this cell. I decided we'd take a detour southwest on Hwy 70/79 to give these guys a look. The beast-storm to our south was racing in our direction, and the ongoing conditions indicated the storm would sustain, and that a long-track tornado was possible. With that, we knew we'd end up playing with it at some point. So with that, we blasted southwest into Gallaway where we pulled into a parking lot that had a decent view. The storm had a very large wall cloud and quickly began to show some very fast differential motion. Within moments, a large, dusty swirl developed beneath the wall cloud. Small vorticies danced among the dust as our first tornado formed. We filmed until it moved behind some trees. We quickly and excitedly took chase back northeast along Hwy 70/79. The tornado eventually disappated before really becoming fully condensed. We called in our report and stuck with the storm.
With rotation still evident, we elected to stick with this cell a bit longer. As we approached the town of Braden, another area of interest developed. We moved northeast of town and stopped to shoot what would become the second tornado, confirmed by law enforcement. Areas of dust kicked up from the ground and got pulled into very turbulent low-level clouds being twisted and pulled into the cloud base. Moments later, a funnel developed giving us our visual that we were watching our second tornado. This tornado had a lot more motion with it, but again, never fully condensed. We once again had to keep pace as blasted toward Mason where we observed the rope out of the funnel over some trees to our northeast. The funnel finally vanished and we stopped just outside of Mason to observe the storm's last gasp.
About this time, reports coming in over the radio that a 'TORNADO EMERGENCY' was issued for the city of Memphis. The beast cell was making its way to the south side of town. After stopping briefly to chat with other chasers, we hurried back into Braden and dove to I-40 via TN-59 and attemped to make an intercept of the Memphis storm. My goal was to dive south on TN-205 into Eads and get south of the monster. Unfortunately it beat us there. In a moment of quick decision, I decided that it would not be safe to try and make it south as the tornado would likely beat us and not result in happy things for myself and my partner. With the core bearing down on us, we pulled off in Arlington and took refuge at a gas station as the core's barrage of heavy rain passed overhead. Power was knocked out about the time we were hearing reports of this tornado passing between Eads and Arlington. Based on radar data and the radio reports, we figure the tornado passed two miles south of us (I-40 @ TN-205). Once the storm cleared, we decided to head back to Memphis. The insane speeds of the storms made it difficult for me to want to pursue anything that had already flown by us. Not to mention the inevitable intersection of the storm with the interstate would likely block us from moving forward, or land us again in its path. Not a risk I wanted to take after dark, so we opted to return to Memphis. My chase partner lives just north of the area where the tornado went through. We decided to venture south in an attempt to meet Chris Collura who was at the mall. We missed each other by about 15 minutes, but stopped to shoot some of the damage around the mall before looting overtook the area and we ran away fro mthe chaotic scene. Dinner was the next thing on the list, so we grabbed a burger at a Red Robin on Germantown Road before calling it a night. By this point, the squall line was about to overtake us and we were also hearing the reports of the extensive damage being done by the storms we had been on earlier. Nashville and Jackson were both in the paths and Jackson ended up slammed by one of the fast-moving supercells.
The squall line, for us, was rather weak and was nothing more than some wind and rain. After wrapping up a few chase-related computer issues, I crashed and crashed hard. The sleep was fast as I was up by 3:45a to drive to the airport for my 6:00am flight back to Denver. Fortunately, I was able to change my rental drop-off and flight to void making a lengthy trip back to Atlanta. That saved me a lot of trouble. I landed back in Denver at 7:30am and was at work by 9am. No rest for the weary. I began to take stock in the ongoing events and caught myself up on the tragedy this outbreak was leaving behind. My thoughts and prayers go out to those affected in this disaster. With as well forecasted as this was, I'm a bit in shock to hear how many people this caught off guard. Many of the deaths resulted from tornadoes after dark, and the speeds to which these storms were moving certainly added chaos into the equation. But, these tornadoes hit well-populated areas, including a college campus and a mall, so that, I'm sure added to the toll. Unfortunately, I feel as if many people didn't take seriously these warnings, as plenty of advanced notice was given, and thus I feel that, too, played a role in the death tolls for this event. Regardless, the events of this outbreak were hard felt across several states, and the scar that will be left behind will remain for quite some time. I wish a swift recovery for thos involved and hope they can quickly return to a normal life. To end, I want to say thanks to Verne Carlson for keeping tabs and nowcasting via text messaging. Also want to say hey and sorry I missed you to Chris Collura and Rocky Rascovich who were both out chasing today. Special thanks to my chase partner for this event, Diedre Mears, who graciously gave me a place to crash for the night and accompanied me on the trip. For that, I am happy to say I was able to pop her tornado-cherry right in her own backyard! Also want to say thanks to all the Colorado Gang chasers who gave me a warm welcome back considering how zombified I looked. Everyone was very excited and definitely allowed me to linger in the moment a bit longer.
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