Moderate Risk Bust in AR and TN

Chase Recap:

Thursday April 10 appeared to be a very big outbreak day in the days leading up to it. The Storm Prediction Center had marked all of Arkansas as a MDT risk and had strong wording and talks of upgrading to a HIGH risk. Unfortunately, not everything panned out the way we thought, and it turned out to be quite a bust. In all, I traveled 1600 or so miles, and wasted a lot of money.

I started off the chase on Wednesday night leaving from Lansing around 6 pm and driving to Effingham, IL. Got to Effingham shortly after midnight and found a hotel for the night. Woke up on Thursday and found tornado watches out for a large part of Arkansas and Missouri. Headed south on I-57 to I-55 and south towards Memphis. Best cell of the day was forming Southwest of Wynne, AR so I got off the highway and headed west into Wynne. This storm had great inflow winds that almost blew me over.

The storms raced away at 55 mph and I tried to keep up with it because radar had shown some rotation. Eventually I gave up the chase on that after it fell apart and headed south towards Forrest City, AR. Had another cell looking ok near Parkin, and headed towards that, but that fell apart as well. I stopped for gas in Earle, AR, then headed across the Mississippi River into Memphis.

Once in Memphis, a couple cells crossed the river north of town that looked like they had potential. Shot up 51 and spent the rest of the day in Western TN chasing after some cells. Nothing ever produced, but gave some good video. We ended up running into some downed lines on 152 east of Spring Creek, TN. It was dark by that point, so we called off the chase and headed east on I-40 towards Nashville. Stopped at Jack in the Box in Nashville and ate since we hadn’t eaten in about 12 hours, and then decided to drive straight through back to Michigan because of the Severe threat on Friday in Michigan. We arrived back in Michigan at about 8 am Eastern time on Friday morning.