Funnel Clouds Form on Interstate 1-81 from David Cate on Vimeo.
Friday night was kind of dull. It had been raining most of the week and I had settled into cleaning the house after the evening news – that was until the news alerts started to go across the screen.
There was a “tornado warning” out last night. That means a tornado had been spotted and the local news channel was flashing radar shots, talking high winds, hail and rightfully doing their job warning people about the fast approaching storm moving up from Greeneville.
There’s no way I could convince anyone that I have any skills as a storm-chaser, but I love a thunderstorm and the more lightening the better. Must be the wild way Nature pushes life to the limit and you might say I’m a thrill-seeker.
My father lives in Fall Branch and I called to make sure he was Ok. Our conversation was short because he was afraid lightning would run in on the telephone as the rains started to fail heavy outside his window.
The sky in Colonial Heights had an eerie golden color when I jumped into the Jeep with my Nikon camera and Flip video camera. The wind was picking up too and I could hear the thunder in the distance.
According to the radar images, my best bet to watch this storm was to drive south on I-81 toward Exit 50 near Fall Branch.
Sure enough, as soon as I got the Tri-Cities crossing exit, the rain had slowed the Interstate traffic to a crawl and my windshield wipers could barely keep up with the downpour.
Slowing down, I grabbed the small video camera and held it up to the sky as I paid attention to the road. I was surprised in just a few moments to catch what looked like a funnel cloud forming near the Fordtown/Harmony area.
It was hard to believe at first and the moment of panic gave way to thrill, but after watching the rotation of the clouds and the behavior of this fast moving wall cloud, it was clearly something news-worthy.
Throughout the night, pictures started showing up all across the web showing these strange funnel clouds and that’s just something we don’t witness too often here in East Tennessee.
Nevertheless, here’s my amateur attempt to capture this wild disturbance on Friday night, May 8th at 8.20pm around milemarker 54 on Interstate 81.
My friend Alan Sieg had some good advice after he learned of my first attempt. “1st rule of chasing tornados; stay behind them. Approach them from the West or the South. Don’t get in front and NEVER get under.
Thanks Alan. I’ll keep that in mind, but this was a thrilling Friday night drive and I’m glad noone was hurt.