A thunderstorm popped up over the south-central Missouri Ozarks on Friday afternoon, quickly began spinning like a top, and kept on spinning for over 400 miles until just short of Virginia’s southwest corner.
Along that path, the supercell spawned numerous tornadoes, including violent twisters that plowed into Somerset and London in south-central Kentucky, part of a multi-state tornado outbreak that killed at least 27 people, including 18 in Kentucky.
Billy Bowling, a storm chaser and natural phenomenon photographer who lives in Lebanon, Virginia, followed the aforementioned supercell storm for about 75% of its track on May 16-17, capturing tornadoes on video and photos, and participating in search-and-rescue efforts in the devastated Somerset area. He is also collecting money for relief efforts in Kentucky — you can find instructions on how to give linked here.
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Virginia experienced some hail and localized wind damage on Friday afternoon and early evening in an initial wave of storms with the complex system, but the storms to the west overnight ran out of the strongest atmospheric wind dynamics by the time they reached Virginia early Saturday morning, and also arrived many hours after peak heating had occurred. The supercell that spawned the Somerset-to-London tornado folded into a broader line of rain and storms as it crossed into Virginia.
Tuesday afternoon was bringing a somewhat similar setup, with severe thunderstorms and tornadoes to the west of Virginia, and a lesser overnight risk into Wednesday to much of Virginia as the storms again outrun the greatest atmospheric dynamics and instability. The repeated bouts of rain have largely helped relieve pre-existing drought in much of our region. Cooler but drier weather, with some 40s lows, is expected moving into the Memorial Day weekend.
First daytime tornado
If you have followed this weekly Cardinal Weather column often, you have likely seen the photography of Bowling, who often captures stunning imagery of weather and astronomical phenomena, plus chronicling the aftermath of destructive weather such as Hurricane Helene’s inland impacts last fall. He has graciously allowed us to use photographs of his in Cardinal News several times. (Please visit Bowling’s photography page linked here to see his prints, many of them Appalachian-themed.)
One thing he had not gotten a photo of yet in his regional weather wanders was a fully visible daytime tornado. He made his way westward late last week as conditions began to form for what promised to be a widespread and potent severe storms outbreak, ultimately delivering on expectations, in the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys. He first stopped overnight in Louisville to assess through forecasting where he would need to be the next day. Generally, that was western Kentucky.
“I made the plan that if I wanted to see a daytime tornado that I could photograph, picking up anything near Paducah and trying to follow to Bowling Green would be my best chance of getting my first daytime tornado image,” Bowling said. “There’s a good road network there that ran parallel to where models indicated that a supercell would mature and track, so that was my plan for leaving Louisville that morning.”
Bowling said he initially had no plans to cross the Mississippi River, but that he has learned over the years that it is better to go to the storms rather than wait for them to get to where he is. He saw a storm fire over the southern Missouri Ozarks on radar that rapidly developed rotation and headed eastward. So he located near Sikeston, a small city in southeast Missouri’s flat and open Mississippi River Alluvial Plan, with the added benefit of wide-open views not obstructed by forests and mountains.
Bowling was in perfect position to capture video and photographs of a classic funnel crossing the cleared agricultural terrain of southeast Missouri. He was able to cross the river back into Kentucky and stay with the storm as it continued tracking due east.
“I got back to Paducah just in time to see it produce [spawn a tornado] again just before town, and then twice more before Bowling Green,” Bowling said. “I needed to get gas, and chalked up the chase as a success and stopped for food and gas at Buccee’s north of the city. I left there after about 20 minutes and got onto the Cumberland Parkway. which was my route home, knowing if that storm was still together I could see another tornado. But with it near dark, I had pretty much recessed to thinking I was finished for the day and I just wanted to get home.’
Rough ride home
For most storm chasers, the day ends with darkness or shortly thereafter, and it’s time to find a room for the night (preferably out of storm danger) and prepare for the next day. In Bowling’s case, the storm was quite literally headed in the general direction of his Southwest Virginia home, though many hours away, as was he. So he and the storm were already tracking the same direction, and, as it turned out, he wasn’t done intercepting it.
“Radar seemed to be not accurate and I realized it had never auto changed from the Nashville radar and I swapped it almost immediately to the Jackson (Kentucky) site and immediately had concern as I was in the center of a very tight rotation signature,” Bowling said. “I was pretty much inside of the tornado as it formed near the lake just outside of Somerset. At that point I had tracked that cell for over 300 miles from SE Missouri all the way to Somerset.
“Coming into Somerset I could see what I thought was a large wedge [a tornado with a wide base] but it was a large wall cloud scrubbing the tree tops,” Bowling said. “I started to see power flashes nearly non-stop and I could see the tornado plain as day with every lightning strike and power flash. I kept driving cautiously knowing if it was what I thought I had seen, something could be on the road somewhere. As I came to the south end of town I noticed power lines down initially and then my headlights caught homes missing a roof, power lines in the road, the Lutheran church completely wide open and multiple cars thrown into a crossing and into power poles that had been snapped.”
Bowling switched into search-and-rescue mode, putting on a headlamp and going car to car and house to house to check for those who had just been hit by the tornado. “The scale of the damage was more than I had imagined but in most search-and-rescue training I’ve attended they all say at a point your adrenaline kicks in and you will go through what you’re trained to do, and I think that very much played into when I entered the damage path,” Bowling said. “I remember bits and pieces, all while trying to document with a camera what I was seeing.”
He did eventually make it home, and was back out on Tuesday tagging storms in Tennessee and Alabama.
Journalist Kevin Myatt has been writing about weather for 20 years. His weekly column, appearing on Wednesdays, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family-run, locally-owned funeral home with locations throughout the Roanoke Valley. Sign up for his weekly newsletter:
