Midwestchasers.com/Kurt Hulst

April 10, 2009:

First high risk of the year.

In the previous post i had mentioned that I wish i had gone chasing in KY. My primary target panned out and produced 2 tornadoes so far. there is a warned cell still cycling NW of Bowling Green, KY.

My secondary target also produced. Murfesboro, TN. But there was no way I would of made that had I left early this morning.

Here are the reports for this day so far.

Thoughts and prayers go out to those affected this afternoon and tonight. I think we could consider this the “Good Friday” outbreak. Bob Hartig reminded me that this is Dixie allies peak season so this looks like things are on track.

Though this event occurred 1000 miles away it was very exciting to watch on GRlevel2. There is a much noticeable difference in the quality of radar compared to GR3. Though this event was far from my physical home here in MI it was very close to my wifes home town. She is from Springhill LA. Two supercells trained right over the town. My father-in-law called this morning to say they were alright. The large hail 1.75 inches lasted less than a minute. The main are of circulation went right over town.

The next area of attention was toward SHV (Shreveport, LA). The following images were from when the supercell was still in Texas but had a very defined classic hook. I never did retain the images of the impressive hook echo as it entered the NW side of SHV. Reports can be found here.

Here are the images from the GRlevel2 program.

Classic Hook Echo.

Cross section of the same image

I was contemplating on going to south central KY today and now I wish I had gone. Tornado Watch up already and Warnings.

I am keeping my eye on this coming Monday. For IL, IN, KY

This semester has been keeping me pretty busy and it has been impossible to find time or systems active enough to chase after.   Anything close has been rain.  South west MI is due for snow tomorrow.  Oh the agony.   One day this will break and I will see a flash of Lighting and something worth taking a picture of.

Since this blog has been so quiet I felt I needed to write something and make some kind of effort to update it.