After vacillating between whether to drive north or south from our stopoff at Avoca, Iowa, my buddy Bill Oosterbaan and I wound up heading for northwest Missouri. With 700mb temps at a minimum of 12C, our move was obviously a gamble, but with SBCAPE in excess of 6,000 j/kg in the region, and with all other elements in place, it seemed to me that if the cap did manage to blow, the resultant storms would be absolute screamers.
Ah, well. We busted. But it wasn't a complete waste. We did have an interesting encounter with a high-based storm that was all anvil and no apparent base. The radar echo was small but strong and persistent, showing cloud tops up to 40,000 feet and even some decent VIL; but when we finally intercepted it along I-29 and pulled into a gas station to get a good look at it, there was hardly anything there--just what appeared to be a patch of mid-level clouds. I figured that despite the appearance of clear air below, there had to be enough precipitation falling to show up at all the tilt levels of GR3, even the .5 degree tilt.
We tracked with this thing for a while just out of curiosity--in fact, we began to feel rather attached to it, even affectionate, so we named it "Rudy." As Rudy continued to the east, he began to show some signs of regrouping and vertical development. But we finally let him go and turned back west. Shortly after, we began to encounter rain, which increased in intensity and rapidly became a downpour. Rudy was off to the east, and here we were, driving through heavy, drenching rain with the sun shining on us brightly. Maybe this kind of thing isn't all that uncommon in the Great Plains, but I can tell you that I've never seen anything like it in Michigan.
Later that night, in Des Moines, some cells popped up and one developed supercellular characteristics. At that point we were too tired to do anything about it, but we sure enjoyed the lightning show.
