April 01, 2024  

(Click on images to enlarge them)
A much anticipated chase setup got my son Ryan and I out on the storm search.  Originally our plan was to go out to western Missouri with our chase partner Brian Stertz, but the decision was made the night before to chase more local as Western Missouri did not look as promising.  The Storm Prediction Center issued an Enhanced Risk with a 10% hatched Tornado Outlook.

Even at the time of our departure in the late morning, the weather models were not locking onto a consistent solution, so we were unsure where our target would be.  Our choices were heading north to near the Missouri/Iowa border with the warm front, going in the vicinity of Moberly, Missouri where the parameters were maximized, or stay along the Interstate 70 corridor where the HRRR model developed some Supercells on some of the model runs.  We drove north deciding to target the warm front, but after a conversation with our chase partner Brian, we switched our target to Moberly.  The downfall to both of these targets was the constant rain that seemed to be contaminating the atmosphere and no storms were developing. 



On the way to Moberly, we made a stop in Martinsburg, Missouri to reevaluate the entire situation.  Radar showed the very start of what appeared to be a growing storm southwest of Herman, Missouri.



That was enough of a reason to move back south to Interstate 70.  We stopped when we reached the highway in New Florence, Missouri and watched to see if the storm continued to grow.  It continued growing and soon became severe warned as the storm moved northeastward.  We continued east to get in position to intercept the storm.
The storm began turning east and as we approached Interstate 64, so we made the decision to branch off southeast and continued moving toward the Chesterfield Valley in St. Louis County.  Ryan took a glance back as we drove and was surprised to see a nicely developed Wall Cloud.

We arrived in the Chesterfield Valley and watched the storm approach.  As it approached it began changing shape and developing a hook.

It came in and had some obvious rotation with some rising scud.  As the hail core approached, we made the move to get back on the Interstate and move east again.  Ryan took one last picture before stepping into the car to move and caught what appears to be a Funnel hanging down from the Wall Cloud (picture #3 below).  Unfortunately for us, he did not notice the funnel as the picture was taken and there was no camcorder facing this feature to confirm or deny rotation.  (We would find out later this was just a few minutes before a confirmed tornado touched down in Chesterfield, Missouri)


As we drove away, Ryan took one more picture back toward the wall cloud as we drove just ahead of the approaching hail core.

This storm then became Tornado Warned as we continued to drive away and put down an EF0 tornado.  We bolted east and grabbed Interstate 270/255 around the south side of St. Louis into Illinois to get in position to watch the storm come over the river.  We worked our way northward toward Glen Carbon, Illinois and pulled off where we had an open view to see the continuing Tornado Warned Storm.  As we watched, we saw an interesting lowering in the distance on the backside.  We watched intently as the feature changed shapes, but could not determine if it had any rotation.


We drove further north to drive right up to the back end of the storm and confirmed by that time, there was no rotation on the back side.

As we backtracked to take Ryan home, we took a look at another incoming storm and were treated to an occasional lightning bolt.  No rotation was noted in this once tornadic storm.


Looking back at the day's events, we drove a lot of miles to end up on storms within 30 miles from the house.  We also had to battle through National Weather Service Radar outages.  We remain unclear if what we saw in Chesterfield was the beginning of the Chesterfield Tornado.  The core of the Tornadic Cell that we watched in Chesterfield and then met again on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River went right over my home.  Luckily, no Tornadoes were ongoing, but it did put down a bunch of 1.50" Hail.








8 Hours  -  312 Miles

Click on the link below to see video of some of these storms.


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