Saturday brought the first serious severe weather event of 2019 to the United States. Although, much of the storms failed to live up to the expectations based on the forecast.

The severe weather event was a relatively small part of a massive and remarkable storm system that is affecting the entire United States.

Assault on all Fronts

On Friday, large snow flakes fell across Tuscon Arizona, and even as far south as the Arizona/Mexico border.

A blizzard packing 70mph wind gusts and up to 10 inches of snow affected western Kansas and other parts of the plains states.

Major flooding has been ongoing in parts of the deep south, particularly parts of central Alabama and Mississippi.

On Sunday the 24th, the low pressure system is now moving across the Great Lakes. Areas of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and surrounding areas can expect up to 12 HOURS worth of 40mph winds with gusts of over 65mph possible. Power outages are likely.

Wednesday in Hattiesburg

On Wednesday, there was a 5% tornado risk issued by the SPC for a small sliver of southeastern Mississippi.

This is a lower end risk, however since it encompassed such a small area it (presumably) leaves a pretty good chance that you can see a tornado.

Many of my biggest tornadoes have come on these lower end days.  The trip was only 90 minutes, so I had to bite on this regardless of what the atmosphere actually looked like.

There was not a single severe weather warning of any kind issued on Wednesday.However there was quite a bit of flash flooding in Hattiesburg, albeit short lived.

King Cake Shake

King Cake Shake in Hattiesburg!

By far the best capture of the day was this KING CAKE SHAKE that chased me down and cornered me at Ed’s Burger Joint. Ed’s is located just down the street from the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.

Yes, it was even better than it looks. The shake contained chunk of king cake that easily made their way up the over sized straw and sloshed around between my now decaying teeth.

Saturday – Moderate Risk!

Saturday was the long awaited and much hyped day. Everyone was expecting a tornado outbreak, although there were a couple of ingredients that seemed to be missing.

Just before midnight on Friday night, the SPC issued a 15% hatched risk for Tornadoes across much of Mississippi.

15% hatched risks are noteworthy for their boom or bust predictions. Often times, they are complete busts. More on this phenomenon at a much later time..

Tornado Watch and Developing Storms

My initial target guess on Friday was that we were would be in Indianola, Mississippi around 10:30am on Saturday.

Things shifted a little bit later. Our first stop off of the highway was located at Mississippi State Road 12 near the town of Durant.

After around 20 minutes of waiting and watching, we hopped back onto I-55 north with the intention of heading to Greenwood, MS.

As storms started to gain strength but just as quickly fall apart, we decided to aim for another cluster of developing storms further south.

Back onto I-55 south, our chosen storm was quickly looking more and more impressive.

As each mile marker passed, we were convinced that if any storm was going to drop a tornado today, this would be the one.

The National Weather Service issued a Tornado Warning for Yazoo county, and the storm was heading directly into our windshields as we traveled south-southwest on I55.

Passing the village of Vaughn, little more than a name on the map, we exited onto Mississippi Route 16 and creeped a bit northwest.

There was a slight clearing in the forest just off the exit, although it could be considered quite modest for Mississippi.

On the Shoulder of I-55

We returned to Interstate 55 northbound after just six minutes on a side road. The storm was moving quickly and this was the only way to maintain a view.

We found a acceptably a clear spot in the trees to pull well of the road and watch the sky’s actions unfold.

The field of vision certainly wasn’t great, but it was good as it gets in this part of Mississippi.

A storm falls apart on a Moderate Risk day in Mississippi.

The Tornado warned storm’s core moved over the interstate directly in front of us. As this occurred, we felt a cool breeze of wind coming at us from the gyrating clouds.

Cool outflow was coming from the storm where warm inflow should have been occurring.  In addition, the radar signature looked very weak and completely disorganized now.

It was obvious this storm was not about to produce any tornado.

Nevertheless, we continued to follow it…for an entire six minutes longer.

After that, the base of the storm was well to the east and completely obscured by the treeline.

There was no real way of catching up with these storm motions, let alone the very sparse road network of Central Mississippi.

Well, Shall we Return South?

As the storm moved away, we looked around at the large number of generally uninteresting storms on radar.

The only noteworthy storm was a small but lone cell that was heading towards Jackson.  The cell had a bit of a hook shape indicative of a good updraft with reasonable sheer.

However, the storm was already nearly parallel with I-55.

By the time we reached Jackson, the storm had (predictably) weakened considerably and was just to our east.

So finally we decided to chase our next target–Whataburger.

Yeah yeah, it was inevitable. It was now after 3:00pm and we had only eaten a little sandwich from Starbucks.

An Empty Return Home

After eating, I drove Sarah around downtown Jackson. I had coincenditally just been here three weeks ago for the first time myself.

We drove down Historic Farish Street just west of the center of downtown Jackson. This is a completely abandoned historic district that contained food, entertainment and nightlife….all except for the still surviving Big Apple Inn.

Strong Tornado Hits Columbus, MS

I won’t get into details on here, but one strong tornado did occur in Columbus, Mississippi late on Saturday evening.

Unfortunately, one person was killed by this tornado. The tornado was rated EF-3 and did quite a bit of heavy damage to Columbus.

This was the only noteworthy tornado of the day. Thus the predicted tornado outbreak did in fact not occur. This is just one of numerous times a 15% hatched has been a complete bust when we were chasing.

Again, we would love to figure out what the deal with this is and hopefully will someday.

Three Strikes

That there makes three busts in a row in the state of Mississippi for me in just three weeks time.

Events may not work out as expected. This is a basic prerequisite of life.

However, the lessons and sights that come along the way will always carry forward with you.

No matter how small…

Liberal Kansas to Trinidad, Colorado.

More Properly Known as: Liberal, Kansas to Trinidad, Colorado – May 2015

Just after the Sun peaked in the sky on May 16th, we were in the pre-trolling phase of  convective development. For today we were just outside of Liberal, Kansas.  There had been a moderate risk placed early that morning which stretched from Liberal, Kansas down to Childress, Texas.

We overslept, and the better risk appeared to be down south in Texas, however at this point we were too far north, and apparently more interested in Braum’s burgers than whatever the hell was going on outside with the atmosphere.

Road Food Time!

It was around 2pm when the towering cumulus clouds appeared to be anything but towering. Notably it wasn’t exactly humid outside as would be preferred for a storm day.

After the repulsively delicious and hedonistic meal was finished, we went out to the car and sat on our asses before driving further south out of town.

After going through an unreasonably lengthy “pre-adventure”, the first official tornado chase in two years had begun.

(Not including a couple of hurricane chases…)

Since leaving the Wichita airport, we had stopped at Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and Five Guys before we finally got our asses on the actual road out into the open skies of Kansas.

As we rolled northwest on KS96 toward Hutchinson, it was almost surreal to be back on the open and empty plains after spending so much time in indescribably crowded, hot, and polluted Asian cities.

Great Bend Reunion

Great Bend Kansas. Population of about 20,000. We’ve probably been through this quaint town 25 times in the last five years.

On the south side of town, we stopped at a KwikShop gas station around 2:30pm. As I am pulling the rental Nissan into the gas station, I notice several cars that have a bit of a peculiar familiarity.

“…Hey guys, is that Andrew? It is! It’s Andrew Newcomb!!”

Uh Oh. I was far from prepared for this.  Before I could even get out of the car, I had a small huddle of friends I had not seen in quite a while.

Sometimes the most incredible of days occur just after your most depressing day, and in the most unexpected fashion.

This was nevermore the case for us than on May 25, 2016. An unbelievable tornado occurred the day after I made a damning misjudgment, which led to missing one of the most chaotic storms in memory.

After a day of funnel clouds teasing us in southeast Colorado, we found ourselves crossing the border back into Kansas just before sunset, as the storm we had been lurking around all day weakened in intensity overall and began to join a developing line of storms in the area.

Chances of a tornado were now assumed to be over for this storm.  There was a much more prominent storm moving towards the northeast slowly, well ahead of the developing line which we were just in front of at the time.

As darkness ascended upon us and the day came to a close, something ominous was brewing.  A deep, violent rumbling could be heard in the open skies…coming from the car.

Yesterday, January 22nd of 2017, Florida was placed under its first ever High Risk for severe weather. A tornado outbreak was forecasted, with several strong tornadoes expected.

This large of a severe weather outbreak is basically unheard of in the Florida peninsula, especially without a hurricane present. It was also the first High Risk anywhere in the United States in almost three years…since the spring of 2014.

Can you believe we are starting our 4th week of 2017 already? With that, the United States is already beginning to experience it’s first severe weather event of 2017….

As of 6:00 am 1/21/2017…An enchanced risk for severe weather has been outlined by the Storm Prediciton Center for portions of Southern Alabama, western Florida, and as well as a second area in northern Mississippi and southeast Arkansas.

The eye of a hurricane is an area of completely calm conditions, which is surrounded by the strongest winds of the hurricane.  In many cases, you are able to look up through the eye and see blue sky for several minutes, or even an hour. After the eye passes, severe winds and extreme rain instantly resume.

Strong Tropical Storm Hermine is less than 12 hours from making landfall in the Florida Big Bend region.

Hermine currently has sustained winds of 65mph. Hermine is currently expected to become a Hurricane prior to making landfall in Florida.

Storm Surge of 4 to 7 feet is expected along the Big Bend region, including the community of Cedar Key and other surrounding areas. This will likely cause a major inundation of water for the entire island.

A Hurricane Watch has been issued for portions of the Florida Gulf Coast.

The Hurricane Watch includes coastal areas extending from Apalachicola to Tarpon Springs.

The majority of the area included is known as the “Big Bend” region of Florida, but the watch extends further south as well, just north of the Tampa area.

There is currently no hurricane or even a tropical storm in existence. However, the National Hurricane Center is forecasting the further strengthening of Tropical Depression 9 into a Tropical Storm overnight.