It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, But the Band Played On

Happy New Year! Last year was tough but we made it through, didn’t we. I hope that 2011 will be a good year for you, for me, for us all.

Yeesh, I’m starting to talk like Tiny Tim. I’d better get on with this post, which is a summary of yesterday. Weatherwise, the last day of 2010 was a humdinger for convective connoisseurs, and jazz-wise, it was a fun evening for yours truly. While the two topics may seem unrelated, they are in fact integrally connected. It’s a well-known fact among my storm chasing buddies that any time I commit myself to a gig and am therefore unable to chase, tornadoes will drop out of the sky like confetti at a gala event. It’s a gift I have. Statistically, my powers hit their zenith the weekend of the Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts in early June. But anytime of the year, all hell is liable to break loose when I’m booked to play somewhere.

Yesterday was a prime case in point. While Steve Durst and I played a thoroughly enjoyable piano-sax gig for the dinner crowd at the Cobblestone Bistro here in Caledonia, tornadoes mowed across Missouri, Illinois, and Mississippi. You could see the event shaping up earlier in the week, with forecast models depicting a potent longwave trough digging deep into the nation’s midsection on Friday; a surface low working its way northward through Missouri and Iowa; high-velocity mid- and upper-level jets generating massive shear; and, critically, a long and broad plume of unseasonably rich moisture juicing the atmosphere up into Illinois ahead of an advancing cold front.

If you want to get some great insights into yesterday’s setup compared with two other similar wintertime severe weather events, check out this superb article by Adam Lucio in Convective Addiction. Adam’s analysis was spot-on. Tornadoes began spinning up early yesterday morning in Oklahoma and Arkansas and continued on through the day in Missouri and Illinois, surprisingly far north. Rolla and Saint Louis, Missouri, got whacked pretty solidly. Later, as expected, the action shifted south, with severe storms firing in Louisiana and a batch of night-time tornadoes gnawing their way across central Mississippi. Yazoo City found itself in the crosshairs for the third time this year as a strong radar couplet grazed past it, but, mercifully, this time the town appears to have escaped yet another direct hit.

With yesterday’s dust finally settled, the SPC’s present tally shows 40 preliminary tornado reports. Sadly, there were some fatalities, not all of which the reports show. What an awful way for the families affected to end a year that has already been difficult enough for so many people.

And the show isn’t quite over. Today, on the first day of 2011, Tornado Watch #3 is in effect for the Florida panhandle and southern Alabama. If that’s any kind of augur for this year’s severe weather season, April through June could be an interesting time for storm chasers.

But enough about the weather already. Let’s talk about jazz.

The Cobblestone Bistro is a beautiful place to play. I can’t believe that something like it exists in Caledonia, a community not exactly renowned as either a jazz hot spot or a north star of destination dining. But here the bistro is, fully operational now that a long-forthcoming liquor license has put its winsome and comfortable bar in business, and with an owner who appreciates and supports live jazz.

Last night I played my first gig at the Cobblestone for the New Years Eve dinner crowd from 6:00-10:00 p.m. Steve Durst joined me on the keyboards, and we spent an enjoyable four hours playing jazz standards in as elegant and ambiance-rich a setting as you could hope to find.

In a restaurant, particularly in a smaller room, it’s important not to play too loudly. People want to talk, and the music needs to add to the mood, not subtract from it by being too intrusive. That can be tricky for a sax player. A saxophone is not by nature a shy, quiet instrument, and a lot of energy is required to play it softly. But with three tables positioned directly in front of Steve and me, both of us absolutely had to reign in our volume.

Evidently we succeeded. We got no complaints of playing too loudly, but we did get some very nice compliments on our sound.

I’ll be playing at the Cobblestone again next Saturday, January 8, from 6:30-9:30 p.m. with Dave DeVos on bass and Paul Lesinski on keyboards. The trio will be playing as well on the 15th and 22nd, with Steve occupying the keyboard seat on the 15th. If you’re looking for a great night out in a beautiful setting, come and check us out.

And with that, I’m signing off and getting this first afternoon of a brand new year underway. I wish you a very happy and prosperous 2011.

–Storm (aka Bob)

Dixie Alley Severe Update: Yazoo City

Unbelievable. Yazoo City, Mississippi, which sustained a massive and deadly EF-4 tornado back on April 24 of this year, got hit by another tornado just a couple hours ago. A tornado warning issued at 8:18 CST reads as follows:

AT 816 PM CST…LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT REPORTED DAMAGE FROM A TORNADO
JUST PASSING THROUGH THE CITY. THIS TORNADO WAS LOCATED 6 MILES
SOUTH OF EDEN MOVING NORTHEAST AT 50 MPH.

A line of tornadic supercells continue to rake across Mississippi. As I write, at 9:19 CST, the most robust circulation is west of Raymond; however, weaker circulation is passing just to the north of Port Gibson. Oops, new scan in, and that circulation appears to have intensified. And there are other tornado-warned storms in progress as well.

This will be a nasty night for Dixie Alley dwellers. I’ll have more to write tomorrow, along with a couple volume scans to share from GR2AE. Let’s hope and pray that no fatalities result from this round of severe weather. Night time storms are killers.

April 22-23 TX-OK-KS Storm Chase

As I begin this post, the first major tornado-producing storm system of 2010 is moving to the east after taking 10 lives in the South yesterday. Already a tornado-breeder, the system matured yesterday into a wide-scale outbreak driven by hefty bulk shear, massive low-level helicities in the order of 600 and above, and CAPE values up to 2,500. Yazoo City, MS, was hit hard by a powerful, rain-wrapped wedge. The verdict remains open as to whether this was a single, long-lived tornado that traveled as much as 200 miles, or one in a series, which seems likelier.

Sorry, I can’t offer a write-up on yesterday’s storms. I was home sleeping, and I have no regrets that I missed anything. With the models suggesting rain-wrapped, low-visibility tornadoes rocketing along at 50 mph or more; with the potential for hydroplaning while driving at gonzo speeds in order to keep on top of fast-moving, rapidly morphing storms and avoid having them get on top of us; and with the logistical madness of three sleep-deprived chasers–Bill Oosterbaan, Mike Kovalchick, and me–having to backtrack afterward to Saint Louis where my car was parked and then drive 450 miles back to Grand Rapids, the negatives of chasing this big, messy, and dangerous tornado outbreak seemed to easily outweigh the potential payoffs.

So Bill, who was determined to catch the action, made arrangements to hook up with Kurt Hulst and Bill’s brother, Tom Oosterbaan, in Illinois, and then he dropped Mike and me off at my car. The two of us headed home, and I can tell you, it felt mighty good to crawl under the covers upon my return and sleep until 1:00 in the afternoon. After talking with Tom yesterday evening, I’m glad I chose as I did.

I may have more thoughts to share about yesterday’s scenario, but I’ll save them for another post. The previous two days in Texas and Kansas deserve some attention in their own right, and not just as the prequel to the big, day 3

outbreak. They may have been a bust for me tornado-wise, but they were nevertheless the first decent system of the year and my first chase out on the Plains. It was a blessing to get out on the road once again and see the vast, textured expanses of the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles.

Naturally, the landscape included the TIV2, which at this point should be designated a mobile national monument of the Great Plains. Back in 2008 we had bumped into its predecessor in Nebraska; this Thursday, we pulled into a gas station in Pampa, gassed and Rain-Xed up, then drove around to the other side of the station, and surprise! There it was–the Tank and its entourage. Cool! Who can resist taking a few photos? Not me.

As for chasing storms, Thursday was a should’a. We should’a either listened to Mike and headed for western Kansas, where most of the tornadoes occurred later in the day, or else gone with Bill’s and my initial impulse to chase the bigger CAPE, albeit forecasted low helicities, near Childress, Texas. For that matter, if we had endured the initial grunge in Wheeler, or better yet, just parked along US 60 east of Pampa–in other words, if we had just sat and waited–we’d have been golden. Instead, we sacrificed an opportune position and went after some cells that fired to our northwest along the dryline. Doing so made a certain amount of sense, as those storms were already looking supercellular and were moving toward the warm front and better helicities, while the cells popping up to our south in advance of the dryline seemed to just sit there and languish. So after the northern storms we went.

Bad decision. One of the southern cells developed steam shortly after we made our move. We could still have turned around at that point, but we chose to commit to our decision and wound up betwixt and between the vortex breeding grounds to our south and north. As a result, we found ourselves looking forlornly at the radar as the southern cell shaped up beautifully and began churning out tornadoes, while our storms struggled valiantly but

never quite got their act together. If there’s a lesson to be learned, it’s that good things come to those who wait. And, I might add, that model SRH is nice if you can get it to cooperate, but it can be deceptive. Helicity is prone to change with the storm environment in ways that forecast models don’t anticipate. If CAPE and 0-6 km shear are sufficient, storms may just generate their own low-level helicity.

Anyway, we chased the dryline storms and busted. Our storms tried hard to tornado, but they just couldn’t quite manage to produce. So instead of the blue ribbon, we wound up with honorable mention: some decent structure, including cool-looking wall clouds, a few funnels, and–as tail-end Charlie went high-precip in the Oklahoma panhandle–a nice, banded-looking storm with a formidable shelf cloud.

As for Friday, we picked exactly the right target up in northeast Kansas along US 75 just south of the Nebraska border. We were smack in the axis of a nice moisture plume. But nothing happened. As the afternoon progressed, the cumulus field we were sitting under began to generate towering cumuli, but these turkey towered and busted against a mid-level cap that just wouldn’t erode. So that was that. Looks like a lot of other chasers got disappointed as well by the northern play. It happens. We finally cut our losses around 7 p.m. and headed back east toward Saint Louis and a band of storms that was moving toward I-70. Ironically, one of these produced a series of tornadoes. If Thursday had been a should’a, Friday was an if-only. If only we’d targeted northeast Missouri…but there had been no reason to do so that we could see.

Now another storm system looks to be moving into the Midwest later this coming week. The action could be closer to home, but I’ll think about that in a day or two. Right now, it’s time to make this post, rest up, and get on with the rest of life.