At 4:40pm I reached Atkins, AR ahead of a fast moving supercell that was making a beeline for town. Unfortunately, this part of Arkansas is heavily wooded. I had planned on chasing E AR but that didn’t pan out. It took me a 15 minutes to scout a location with good road (escape) options and view to the southwest. I found this location on the southwest side of town as the updraft base was coming into view. The base was fairly small and with rapid rotation. I was confident that it was producing a tornado even without having a view of the surface circulation. At 5:00pm, I got a clear view of the tornado as it grew form an elephant trunk within a translucent bowl of rain/spray (from a lake), into a wide stovepipe. As you can hear in the YouTube clip above, I immediately reported the tornado to 911. At 5:02 the core overtook me and I never saw the tornado again. 

Looking south as a large tornado enters the south side of Atkins, AR.

 

Tornado backlight by lightning

 

Tornado appears to grow in size and intensity as it moves across the south side of town.

 

After filming the tornado I moved to 1-mile east of Atkins where I found the damage track. Here is a look at three homes that were damaged on the east side of Atkins, AR. The center of the tornado moved directly over home B. The letters on this Google Earth image correspond to those in the images below.

 

The damage track appeared to be about 1/4 to 1/2 mile wide on the east side of Atkins, AR. Two homes on the periphery of the tornado appeared to have EF-0 (home A) and EF-2 (home C) type damage. Home B in the middle of the path was completely removed from its foundation and disintegrated. Two of the neighbors from home A were home B looking for survivors. I asked if everyone was okay and they said they were fine. Although, they didn’t know if anyone was at the home B when the tornado hit. About an hour later I came back through the same area and there was a bad car accident at the start of the damage path. A car had collided with another vehicle that had stopped where a power pole was across the road. The accident likely occurred when visibility was reduced by a line of storms moved through after the initial supercell.

 

After clearing the damage track I moved east to Blackwell, AR and awaited a second supercell.

 

As the supercell neared my location it was enveloped by a fast moving squal-line and weakend.

Chase Partner:  Solo   Vehicle: S-10     Miles: 850