Chase - 5/2/08 - Arkansas and Mississippi

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SevereStudios Blog from May 2, 2008
Video from our chase
Chase Pictures
Chad's Videos and Pictures

The day started off when myself (Ben Holcomb) and Chad Rust left Lansing, MI around 5:30 am. We got an earlier than anticipated start, and headed south to Indy then west to Effingham. We passed a few elevated garden watering cells on I-69 in Indiana on the way down with some good lightning. Once we started getting into Illinois, it appeared that maybe we were wasting gas. I even contemplated splitting and going north to the target near Davenport, IA as I didn't think I'd be able to get south fast enough to meet the cells in Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi. I'm glad I ended up going south.

In order to save time, Chad got us food from Wendy's while I filled up the truck. We kept heading south as fast as we safely could. Once we crossed the Mississippi River into Missouri there was a Tornado Warning issued for just over the border in Arkansas. We shot south on I-55 as fast as we could again, and managed to intercept that cell near the small town of Stanley, MO. The only weather we observed was a decent wall cloud, but nothing great. The rotation had slowly died out the previous few scans.

We headed further south to the town of Blythville, and then south towards Luxora, AR. The tornado that had been previously reported near Lepanto, AR had apparently dissipated as we didn't really see much of anything. Back to I-55 south we headed towards the cell coming out of the Parkin and Earle area. We had to gun it south on I-55 to pass in front of the storm. We got shot out of the side of the storm and off to our west was a beautiful tornado heading towards us. We got off at the next exit which was the Terrell, AR exit. We parked near the highway overpass and captured great film of a large tornado. The tornado turned into a wedge and became rain-wrapped. We observed it roping out.

At that time we headed east towards Terrell and north. We observed more wall clouds, some very intense and some of the loudest lightning I have ever heard in my life, and observed even more rotation. We eventually decided to head back south on I-55 and get across the Mississippi river while I edited video and got it online.

We dropped south of Memphis into Mississippi where we headed east on state route 72. We had to take a quick detour to find some wireless and finish uploading my video.

We then went towards the town of Corinth, MS where we observed hail, and a funnel cloud if not a full tornado. It was hard to tell as it was getting dark at this time of the evening, but most likely it was a very pronounced funnel. It wouldn't surprise me if it did touch down a few times.

We then dropped to the east to Iuka, MS where we dropped south on highway 25, then west on 30. We pulled off on a side road and did a phoner with Kenny Allen back in South Dakota. Some more very intense lightning, including some very close strikes. We felt 15 degree warmer air start blowing out of the supercell and realized we needed to get back east in a hurry. We headed back to Tishomingo, MS where we met up with SevereStreamers Brett Adair and Ron Jarrell. We ended up driving in convoy with them up to Iuka, then into Alabama where we got on Natchez Trace Parkway. We were watching a very defined funnel the whole time, and thought we may have witnessed a possible touchdown (or very close to it) near the AL/MS Border on US-72.

We ended up eventually calling off the chase, and Brett Adair dropped back south to Alabama to head home while we headed up to Nashville. A couple hours or so later we ended up in Bellevue, TN where we hit up the waffle house. After 12+ hours of not eating, it tasted like heaven.

We said goodbye to Ron Jarrell and his crew and then headed up to Goodlettsville, TN where we found a room for the night, completely exhausted. All in all, we traveled about 1000 miles on Friday from 5:30 am EDT until about midnight EDT. That's an average rate of travel around 55mph. (1000 miles in 18 hours)

We returned back to Michigan on Saturday where I edited some video and fell fast asleep.

This map depicts our 1600 mile route on May 2-3, 2008

A special thanks goes out to Chad Rust for all of his help with this chase. I wouldn't have been able to do this all alone!