OCTOBER 18th, 2004 NORTHEAST ARKANSAS CHASE

We left Ozark, Arkansas around PM. We set out with the idea of heading east on I-40 for Russellville, Arkansas and then deciding where to go from there. It was very windy and quite warm for this time of year.

We arrived in Russellville, AR around 1230PM. Along the way we saw several impressive cumulus clouds. In Russellville we stopped at a park and took these pictures of the clouds that would slowly build over the next several hours.



Around 2pm we decided to head a bit farther east and try and stay ahead of the racing and growing clouds.

At this point i decided that since there was absolutely no other signs of anything developing we would continue to pursue these clouds. Actually the entire rest of the area was devoid of anything other than small fair weather cumulus. It was obvious these clouds were moving pretty fast and this would be the biggest challenge all day.We continued eastbound on I-40 toward Morrilton. At Morrilton we headed north on HWY 95. North of the small town of St. Vincent i took this picture of the still slowly developing clouds



Now the fun began. Having no other choice but to take slow 2 lane highways i began to get bogged down in the hills of North-Central Arkansas. The roads were very winding and so our progress was quite slow. During the entire chase on the small roads we made very little progress in the way of actually gaining on them, so it became quite frustrating seeing the clouds developing into storms that were now going severe. We continued north on 95 to jct 124 and headed east to the jct with Hwy 65 and from there continued east on Hwy 92. Near the town of Greers Ferry on Greers Ferry Lake the road finally turned wet. I was not sure if we were ever going to quite catch up to the storm when finally we started to see some of the cloud base structure. It was obviously a intense storm. At the small community of Drasco the road became hwy 25 which would take us the rest of the way into Batesville, Ar. These pictures below are of the lowering on the western edge of the storm. There appeared to be at times several funnel clouds dancing around this rotating monster and it looked like any minute a large tornado would descend.



Another frustrating part of this chase was once we did catch up to the storm enough to stop and get video and pictures we could not find a descent viewing location. Finally we were able to find a spot but it was after we missed what appeared to be through the woods and hills a larger funnel cloud.



From this same location on this hill we were able to see other storms developing to the north

 

Below are 2 animated gifs showing growing storms to the north.

And a interesting apparently struggling storm behind us...also notice to the left of the small storm. That is the edge of another storm that was developing and this is the LP supercell we got in Batesville. AR.

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