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May 23
May 23,
1998 Western and Central Missouri Chase
Yet another severe weather day in the
year of the warm front!! Today the warm
front was aligned nw to se across the state of Missouri. A surface low was over
the nw section of the Kansas City Metro area. A moderate risk of severe storms
was forecasted for the Kansas City area and much of the NW and C Missouri by
late afternoon. Winds north of the fairly strong warm front were e-se, while winds
south of the boundary were s-sw. The airmass south of the boundary was very
warm and unstable; however, a moderate cap was in place over the southern
half of Missouri. This would allow for an undisturbed inflow of the unstable air
into the cells which were forecasted to develop along and north of I-70 along
the warm front. Kathryn Ray and I were chasing together this day, and decided
to stop by the NWS office in Pleasant Hill, Mo.(this is the Kansas City office for
those who have never heard of this town). We waited patiently for the first storms
of the day to pop. In the meantime, Bill Bunting (a fellow chaser and National
Weather Service meteorologist) gave us a detailed briefing with regards to the
hot severe weather areas setting up during the afternoon. Also at the NWS, we
met another chaser from Detroit, Pat McMahon. He was on a three week storm
safari in the plains and was very eager to chase! The storms started to fire and
soon we were out the door. Pat followed along in his vehicle as we decided to
head east on I-70. Storms were forming in the north and northeast suburbs of
Kansas City and well to the east of Kansas City. The chase was on!!
We targeted the storm which was moving
through Saline Co. since it was going
to move into an area of better backed surface winds. We raced east to intercept
the now severe storm which was approaching the town of Marshall. A storm to
our nw also had become severe, and was producing 2 inch hail in Clinton Co..
We opted to stay with the Marshall storm. We caught up to the storm as it moved
slowly northeast, passing west of the town of Marshall. The storm definitely was
indicating low level shear both visually and on radar as we watched it cross Mo
Highway 14 (about 10 miles north of Marshall). We did now notice that the storm
was moving more n-ne. We speculated that this motion may be related to the
northward lifting of the warm front. We also thought that this storm motion would
reduce the tornado potential, and as we found out later, it did in fact limit the
development of tornadoes. Unfortunately the next hour was spent trying to keep
up with the updraft region which was north of Brunswick Mo at 6:35pm.
The storm re-organized quickly around
6:40 pm. We pulled over to watch the
updraft region lower, and soon a wall cloud appeared. Frequent cloud-ground
lightning also was noted as the wall cloud firmed up and became established
near the intersection of Mo Highway 11 and Rt M and 6 miles south of the town
of Mendon(Chariton Co.). We remained at this location for about 15-20 minutes
watching the wall cloud wrap up and then dissipate. Another glaring problem
with this storm was that it could not develop a noticeable rear flank downdraft.
Without the RFD to balance out the strong inflow into the storm, it was not very
likely that this storm would produce a tornado. We now had to hope that a mid-
level jet max(which was forecasted to approach Mo later)would strengthen the
RFD enough to initiate tornado development.
We watched the storm continue to pulse
and re-organize as it slowly lifted to
the northeast across Chariton Co.. Between 7:00 and 8:30 pm, the storm was
trying to become better organized. The storm motion had more of an easterly
component as it moved further along through Chariton Co. It was apparent to
us that the storm seemed to intensify more with this now e-ne movement. At
8:20 pm, the RFD which had been missing earlier, now was working into the
storm from the w-sw. Radar also indicated the rapid intensification of the storm
rotation. A fairly strong in-bound/out-bound couplet was noted on the NEXRAD
data with this storm. Also a much larger(and lower) wall cloud was organizing
up the road from us near the small town of Mike which was in Chariton Co. We
thought that this was the closest this storm had come to producing a tornado,
and pulled off to video the rotation. Sunset was already past so the ambiant
light available was now waning. The storm tried hard to tornado but never was
able to make a connection to the ground. We decided to end the chase at this
point, and we watched storms back-build along the warm front. A lightning
show from approaching storms from the west was quite entertaining. Later in
the evening, we met a group of storm chasers from the University of Mississippi
who were also tracking the same storm. Time to rest up and get ready for the
next day which was supposed to set-up over S.Kansas or N.Oklahoma........
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