Stats The cold, hard numbers behind this chase.
Date	Thursday, May 8, 2008
Length of Chase	1.6 hours
Distance Covered	57 miles
...for the year	936 miles
Chase Partner(s)	Barry Roberts
States traveled through	Alabama

Even though the mode of convection for this day was a large squall line, the immediate proximity to work and areas of weak rotation were enough to get Barry and me out to door for a quick chase. We left Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, AL around 1:45 PM and drove about 5 miles NW of I-565 and County Line Road in far southeast Limestone County to let the squall line pass.

The first embedded storm to impact us was rather unimpressive and we decided to head back to the office when I noticed an area of weak rotation on radar approaching our area from northern Morgan County. We headed south on County Line Road and pulled off to the side of the road south of the airport due to poor visibility caused by heavy rain. The winds were rocking the car pretty good and after a few minutes, we continued driving southbound and almost drove into a large tree across the road. It turns out that a rain-wrapped tornado had passed just a mile or two south of where we had pulled over (view map).

I returned to the damage site later that afternoon and was impressed by the circulation patterns that the tornado had caused in a large field of wheat. I ran into a three-member team from the National Weather Service forecast office in Huntsville who conducted a ground survey of the damage. Based on their observations, the team estimated peak winds of 100 mph, resulting in an EF-1 rating on the enhanced Fujita scale. The path length was 2.6 miles with a peak width of 250 yards.

• Radar Imagery:
  • Reflectivity and velocity still images of tornado at 2:31 PM CDT (National Weather Service)
  • Reflectivity loop (1, 2)
  • Velocity loop
• Satellite Data:
  • Visible
  • Water vapor
• Surface Imagery:
  • 1533 UTC METARs
• Upper-air:
  • Okolona, Mississippi profiler
  • Birmingham, Alabama 12Z skew-t
• Storm Survey:
  • National Weather Service, Huntsville, AL forecast office storm survey
• Storm Prediction Center Products:
  • Storm reports
  • Day 1 Convective Outlook
  • Tornado Watches (277, 278)
  • Mesoscale Convective Discussions (1, 2)

Click the above thumbnail to view an enlarged route map (398 KB). The approximate tornado path is indicated by the blue line and our route is indicated by the red line.