The chasing world had been all about Thursday's progs for several days prior. On Tuesday night, after a look at the models, I made my decision that I would chase the event - although I wasn't enthusiastic about the territory. The storms would be fast-movers, discouraging a Wisconsin chase in hilly terrain, which relegated me to chasing in Iowa - my least favorite state to chase in because of endless past busts.
Thursday morning, I made the decision to head out around 7:30a.m. and head toward southwestern Wisconsin. I drove north out of Canton on Route 78 for a couple hours and got a few miles north of Carrolton, IL (sp?) when I got a phone call from Scott Kampas. He and Andrew Pritchard were on their way back to Illinois from a Nebraska chase the previous day, and both intended to chase today's setup as well. Because I was without data, they gave me a heads up that the I-80 corridor in Iowa would go within the next couple of hours, and that East-Central Iowa may be a good place to be - especially with the improved terrain. They said that Mark Sefried and Darin Kaiser were leaving for that area soon, and that a tornado watch was likely to be issued soon as per the new MCD. I decided to drop a little south to make a v-line for Iowa at that time, shooting west on I-88 to the Quad Cities, where I could pick up I-80 and go as far west as necessary.
Scott and Andrew returned to Scott's house in Pekin for a little while (since they were close anyway) to grab some things and look in depth at data, and I told them that I would be in Iowa City until I felt like I needed to move. In Iowa City, I found a Steak N Shake, where I nooned, and a Holiday Inn, where I got data. I saw cells firing in South Central Iowa, approximately 60 miles south of I-80, right along I-35, which were quickly intensifying to tornado-warned status, but were already forming a line. I wasn't overly impressed yet, so I went west where I could see for myself, and giving myself the option to intercept quickly, should one storm become dominant.
One did. A tornado warning was issued for Marion County, two counties to my west, for an embedded supercell that had sustained itself for almost an hour and a half. I had high confidence that it would stay together, so I planned an intercept route that would take me between Montezuma and New Sharon, near the Poweshiek/Mahaska county line. Well, I killed it. The last SVS issued on the tornado warning stated that there were now two areas that could potentially produce -- one near Knoxville (the old, occluded, weaker meso) and the other near Melcher-Dallas (the newer, intensifying meso). The next warning, fifteen minutes later, was a severe thunderstorm warning for the same county. I about puked.
So, I began to head back towards Iowa City, in case something still decided to fire out in front of the line. About that time, I got a call on my phone from Scott Kampas, who let me know that he and Andrew Pritchard were about as far out of Iowa City on the other side, heading for the city as well. We planned to head a little north on I-380 towards Cedar Rapids, and communicate on the radio the rest of the day. We stopped at a BP to fill up and retrieve data, where we found that one of the cells on the line to our immediate west intensified suddenly. It almost immediately went tornado warned after forming a strong low-level couplet, and right away, Scott plotted an intercept route, which took us south of Iowa City by a few miles.
Driving south on 380, the storm looked fantastic. As we came toward the area of interest, we could see it sported a long, ragged wall cloud that looked nowhere close to producing, but did have a spectacular tail cloud stretching off to the north. The inflow into this meso was worth noting, and it seemed that, although the line had caught the cell, it may still have a chance to keep pulsing. We stopped and watched for awhile, but with the storm moving off to the northeast at nearly 60mph, we needed to move again soon. The meso kept messing with us and would weaken and become ragged and disorganized, only to wrap up again and look much better a few minutes later. We followed for a while, and even threaded the needle between two tornado-warned cells with wall clouds (a new one had formed to the original's southwest), until we lost the original cell due to traffic and small towns.
We dropped back to Cell #2, which, as we had noted earlier, had a lowering that resembled a wall cloud (none of us got a great look at it as we concentrated on driving and Cell #1). We followed it for a while, going through severe and tornado warned stages, and finally let it go after being in close proximity to the updraft...and having nothing interesting happen or seem imminent for the better part of a half hour.
Cell #3 was just getting going back near Iowa City, though, with a new tornado warning issued. We dropped south in a hurry to get to it, coming through the weak core to a sight of another rainy, outflow-ish wall cloud with yet another remarkable tail cloud. This one was less ragged than the original, and the contrast was by far the best of the day. Scott, Andrew, and I stopped in an all-Illinois chaser convergence, along with Mark Sefried, Darin Kaiser, Dan Dimitroff, and Joe Ciota. We viewed this wall cloud for a while, which briefly had an intensification of inflow and had a one or two minute window when it seemed there may be a slim hope of tornadogenesis. That was short-lived, though, and we still followed this cell for a while, with hopes of it reorganizing like Cell #1, but it never did. We continued following it until reaching Hwy 61, where we dropped south to DeWitt, and Scott, Andrew, Dan, Joe, and I enjoyed some solid pizza at Happy Joe's.
After, a cell fired southwest of the Quad Cities (on our way home) that quickly intensified. We hoped to get some lightning shots, so we stopped at a Panera Bread in Bettendorf to gauge where and when we'd need to be. The cell quickly intensified, though, and became severe, sporting a very well-defined base. Better light may have proven what I suspect -- this was the most potent updraft base of the day. We still had lightning on our mind, so we got to a good clearing about a mile off the river, where the storm overtook us with strong winds and, as other members of the caravan estimated, quarter sized hail. According to LSRs, a barn and shed were destroyed not far from where we watched.
After being overtaken, we decided to not follow, and began the trek home on I-74. I arrived back in Canton around 10:45p.m., completing a day of nearly 15 hours of almost constant driving, and a day of 600 miles.
On a personal note, H, if you had your HAM license, you'd have seen more chasers than you did.
A few images:
LtoR: Elongated Wall Cloud on Cell #1, Wall cloud on Cell #3, Mammatus at sunset on Cell #4 near Quad Cities
