March 2 2012 Chase Log

March 2, 2012 Chase Log

James Gustina

Summary: March 2nd ended up being my second chase of the season and the first chase I had with a tornado. Storm speeds were ridiculous (70 mph) and with the storms being HP coupled with the hilly terrain in and around the Ohio River in Kentucky made this day extremely difficult to chase. Lucked out on the second supercell and caught a brief rope as it condensed on the other side of the road and did some low-end EF2 damage down the road.

March 2^nd stood out very early on the GFS runs in the last week of February. The accuracy of the runs leading up to March 2^nd were astounding. The GFS had a significant storm system affecting the Ohio Valley sometime between March 2^nd-March 3^rd. Excellent moisture return, with dewpoints in the lower 60s as far north as Indianapolis along with an extremely sheared environment made this day worth looking at in its own right. But the biggest shock was the projected instability values. The NAM was showing MLCAPE in excess of 2000 j/kg. The SPC ended up going with a moderate risk at 6Z with a significant tornado threat (15% hatched) over most of Kentucky, extreme southern Indiana and Ohio, as well as central Tennessee. They would later upgrade it to a high risk with a 30% hatched tornado risk over all of Kentucky and southern Ohio.

I made arrangements to go out right after school and ended up rolling out of Cincinnati around 3:00 as two supercells were moving across southern Indiana, the lead cell producing the Henryville tornado.

The storms were moving exceptionally fast so we made the choice to hop on I-71S. That was perhaps the biggest mistake of the chase. We were about two miles outside of Glencoe, Kentucky with the lead supercell above crossing the river headed directly for our stretch of interstate. Traffic had slowed to a crawl due to an overturned semi in the median ahead. With the lead supercell crossing the river we finally made it through the bottleneck and exited at Glencoe. We drove south for about a mile and tried to get a view of the base but the hills ended up blocking our view. We were forced to drop that cell since there were no viable road options at the time. We continued to drop south on US 127 as the second supercell came across the river. We got our view of the base about 5 miles south of Glencoe and stopped. We had come into the notch from the north so we had a pretty good view of the rain-wrap around the backside. We waited and let the gust front pass over.

After the gust front passed Ryan noted rapid motion right down the road. A nubby funnel poked out of the wall cloud and we observed a dust cloud under it. Within about 15 seconds the tornado almost fully condensed and rapidly moved off to the east. The RFD hit us within a minute with ping-pong ball sized hail and roughly 60 mph winds.

We got blasted with rain and hail for about two more minutes before we finally continued south. There had been a power flash down the road but we hadn't noticed any debris at the time. Unfortunately the tornado hit a stable, ripping the roof off and collapsing some of the walls, as well as a house which lost a part of its roof.

Thankfully no one was badly injured. 

We stayed for about 30 minutes after the tornado waiting for the local police and fire show up. At that point we were unsure of continuing the chase due to the time of day (darkness was only about an hour and a half away at this point) and how far away all the remaining storms were. We moved out and continued south to Frankfort before calling the chase. We came back through the area that had been hit earlier and the police had completely blocked it off. I haven't heard anything about rebuilding but hopefully the owners were able to rebuild. The National Weather Service in Wilmington rated the tornado as a low-end EF2. It stayed on the ground for about 5 miles with a maximum width of 150 yards.

Chase Stats
Miles Driven: 174
Chase costs: $80
Tornadoes: 1 (EF2)
Max Hail Size: ping pong