Friday, January 11, 2008

January 7th and 8th, 2008 - Tornado Outbreak in SW MO

On January 7th and 8th 2008, the Southwest Missouri area was overwhelmed by about 29 tornado touchdowns. 62 seperate tornado warnings were issued by the National Weather Service for the SW MO area in about a 12 hour period. So many agencies worked together to get through this. It was a very long event that will not soon be forgotten. In this event, storms kept cycling and producing tornadoes over and over, and they kept following the same SW to NE track through SW MO.

Myself and Jeff Kerr (KC0VGC) were out spotting during this event, and you can read our event review here. Included are photos and video.

Thank you to my wife and kids, and to Kerr's wife and kids for being brave and staying safe at home while we were out trying to do our part to provide the SkyWarn group and the National Weather Service with information to help keep the public as safe as possible.

4 comments:

The Lorax said...

Well done. Your chase log shows your experience and common sense. I didn't hear of too many gomers out there Monday (since it wasn't a great forecast prior to the event)... but that could have been one of those setups where green chasers might have been hurt.

Thanks for posting... and for your service.

The Lorax said...

Last count from my discourse with the NWS...

"....were up to 23 tornadoes....with a lot more surveying to go".

A day that will live in weather infamy. Amazing that more people and livestock weren't lost. However, reports are still coming in.

JMo said...

I was out at NWS today to go over some video I had from Republic and some from South Springfield, and it sounds like there were possibly some that were in squall lines, and high straight line winds masked the tornado touchdowns. The more severe damage from the tornado touchdowns is starting to become more evident.

Very crazy event. It's kind of funny that the number of storms and tornadoes was such a big deal, we aren't even getting to the part about it being JANUARY yet. It just floors me to think about it.

JMo said...

By the way, the video (shot by my spot/chase partner) is not even close to being quality enough for TV. It was just too dark. The best things I could pull are in the event log.

We are open ideas on better ways to get digital copies off of the 8mm tape.