5/4-6/2010 -- Yazoo City Tornado Path and Northwest KS Supercells

[Having some trouble getting the tracker (on the right) to work. I'll continue working on a solution. Until then, you can see our path here, courtesy of Benton]

Started my annual chase trip by flying to Jackson, MS to meet up with the usual suspects. We acquired a minivan at JAN and ventured northwest toward Memphis. On the way, we stopped over to inspect the damage at Yazoo City from the EF4 tornado. Below are pictures of the path as seen from the air as I flew into JAN. You can see the Delta in the background -- Yazoo City is along the intersection of the Delta, forest, and tornado path. The most amazing aspect of the damage path was its width, not necessarily its intensity. While it was a strong tornado, the damage where we inspected was largely EF1 to EF3. We then drove back toward I-55 where we once again crossed the tornado path -- it was amazing how quickly it went from full forest to a mowed down forest. Anyway, ended the night at Jennifer (Grady's sister) and Wes' beautiful house in Southhaven, MS (near Memphis). We enjoyed a few beers and award-winning BBQ before calling it a night.

Yazoo City EF4 path from the air.

Another perspective.

Mowed down forest along I-55 -- with pristine forest in the background. Note the dramatic drop-off.

One of the many homes damaged in Yazoo City.

Wednesday was largely a ferry day -- we drove from Memphis to Wichita. We had our annual beers and wings at Hooters before downing a few more at Kirk's (Grady's ol' friend) house. As always, this was a good time.

Thursday presented two targets -- nw KS or east-central KS -- with neither looking great for tornadoes. We felt the cap was simply too strong for our liking in east Kansas (where the better moisture was) and decided to head toward Colby, KS, where expected supercells and bowing segments to develop toward sunset north of the low. We spent a couple hours in a nice park (complete with a nice pond filled with malformed fish and turtles) throwing frisbee and poring over data. Finally, storms developed to our northwest and we ventured after them. Despite okay reflectivity patterns, the storms failed to provide anything nice for the eyes. Stratus clouds and extremely elevated bases provided little hope for any structure (as you can see via the video below). We did test the hail in one of the supercells -- we ended up with quarters. We continued to play with the storms on the way back to Goodland where we eventually called it a night at the Holiday Inn Express. The winds were gusting 40+ mph when we were checking in, which made for a wind chill in the 20s. Storm chasing and wind chills -- yeah, okay ...

Yep, this is about as good as it got on this day.

Second supercell ... we started to get hailed on shortly after this photo.

Small hail covering the ground near Lebanon, NE.

The professor playing with the ice.

A rather bland video of the day's activities.