Welcome to the jungle….

After about a decade of turning down chasing in the jungle I finally went on 3/2/2012. I quickly realized why I didn’t go before. It’s not fun and games as the song says. You can’t see squat through the trees. I do think I saw bigfoot, but then again it was only a brief peak through the forest.

It was a great chase don’t get me wrong, I was just not properly prepared and did not have a good strategy in place for dealing with the trees.  I chased the trees in WI but Dixie Alley offers a whole other challenge. The main one being the road network. Every town had a spider web leading out of town, but with 10 years of the grid system I had become spoiled.

Those of you that know the way I chase, know that there is not a road I will not take to get to a storm. With that said we discovered within that spider web the roads were very narrow and full of switchbacks that prevented us from attacking the storm like I am use too. But this chase afforded me an opportunity to learn new things as each chase does, but this was a little different. It wasn’t weather I was learning, it was about a completely different style of chasing. Chasing the Dixie Alley jungle is unique.

This by no means a bust chase. One thing I pride myself on is target and timing. My targets are usually spot on, and as far as timing is concerned, my ADHD prevents me from sitting for any length of time. So I focus on time of initiation to prevent that. Those that chase with me like the many times we just drive right up to tornadoes.This doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens more times than not.

Ok back to this chase. Carl Brakke was my chase partner this trip and our target was Bowling Green, KY. As it turns out it was a great target. One problem, we got there early. If you have been paying attention, this is bad. Our timing was based on storms that would be rolling through KS and MO overnight and early morning with severe potential. Our plan was to intercept these by about the time we hit St. Louis. Which we did. Had a SVR warned hailer roll through right on time. So this was no bust and gave us high hopes for the day.

We arrived in KY about 10am as planned but unfortunately gave me way too much time to make adjustments to the playbook for the day. Storms were fireing in IN and there was no way I would be sitting still with storm in my reach. So off to IN we went, traveling those switchback roads for an intercept. FAILED at the river. I was so damn frustrated it began to cloud my decision making process. I was in such a hurry to score on the trip that it didn’t matter it was only 11:30.

By later afternoon we were intercepting a storm near Sturgis KY, redemption was within our grasp. We cut through town with the tornado sirens blowing like mad and people wandering around not concerned one bit. I’ll save that for later.

We could see a tornado as we made our play just outside of town and the storm was booking at about 50kts (57.6 MPH). So we crushed it to get a better view but that was not happening. So in classic Marcus fashion, I punched in. We could not get close enough.

Once the rain went horizontal and the trees started laying over I knew well enough to get out of there. The road was only as wide as a driveway and there were cells right behind this one and picking up speed.

Got out of the core but never could catch these storms again. The roads we were on sucked and it appeared the closer we got to catching them the faster they moved.

We bugged south towards Nashville, TN as it was in the crosshairs missing the tornado by about 10 minutes but the storm continued putting down decent hail so we stayed on it.

 

Never did produce another tornado but we were satisfied in a great chase. Next time the jungle will not get the best of me.

First chase of the season 1873 miles and a double overnighter. That boys and girls is my kinda chase.

 

.