This afternoon we had a tornado touch down on the Eastern Shore near Chase Crossing in Accomack county.  Here was the view from Super Doppler 10 at about that time:

Super Doppler 10 Earlier Today.

  The storm was very small and not moving.  It didn’t look too ominous on radar.  The warning came out around 1:30pm.  We heard that there were reports of trees down, and some damage, but so far we haven’t had any specific reports.  Keep checking our main page of wavy.com for updates.  On that page we did have a photo of the tornado from one of our viewers. 

Accomack County Tornado

 I looked at the surface maps.  The warm front that was supposed to keep moving north today stalled out over the area.  At the time of the storm, the front looked like it was lined up exactly over Accomack county as a stationary front.  This changed everything, including increasing the chance for storms across the whole region.  I’ll admit today was not a good forecast.  I thought the clouds this morning would help the stablity and I thought we would be easily warm-sectored.  Along with the front the humidity was very high.  The LFC’s (Level of Free Convection) this morning were very low, and I think they stayed lower than the models showed this afternoon.  So any storms that formed had a base that was low to the ground.  Any spin could easily survive (briefly) near the surface.  Low LFC’s are a very good tool to use to forecast tornado possibilities.  We’ll have a lot more on the tornado on-air this evening on WAVY news 10 at 6 and 11.  We’ll also update it on the site.  Tomorrow should be quieter as high pressure builds in more.  Also, for more on the solar storm see my previous blog: Solar Storm.

Meteorologist: Jeremy Wheeler