07/14/09 REPORTS: MN/SD/IA

[Melanie Metz]

Not quite as impressive as that amazing supercell so many captured in NE yesterday... but still a nice chase for Central MN! Finally we had some moisture up here and a warm front to play with. I left work at 4 and intercepted a TOR warned cell near St. Cloud ~ 5:45. The structure was more impressive than I had hoped for. Even a couple nice funnels, rapid rotation overhead and back home in less than 3 hours! Luckily nothing touched down in St. Cloud. The meso did pass right over the SCSU Met building...

Website will be updated in the morning.

Melanie
http://www.twistersisters.com

 

[Chris Allington]

I got on some towers right as they went up east of Omaha, the cap won but it actually half way tried for a brief half hour. Miles traveled: 43!

 

[Andrew Butler]

Caught the tornadic cell out near Spicer, MN. Didn't get in very good position but still observed the incredible ground-scrubbing wall cloud and several nice funnels- topography out there is a challenge and I was too far away to verify ground contact. Pretty much anywhere under the wall seemed to be fair game, lcls were ridiculously low and there were dancing vortices literally everywhere. When everything wrapped in rain I backed off. Should have been closer!

 

[Scott Weberpal]

Ended up playing around with the SE SD/SW MN storm which was nothing to write home about. Never really could contain its outflow, and made one feeble attempt at a forward flank meso south of Fairmont. The highlight of the day was the spectacular mammatus near Blue Earth at sunset.

 

[Bob Hartig]

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.

 

[Andrew Butler]

Some poor-quality video here but after checking GPS logs and reading the damage assessment the second half of the video shows the end of the life cycle of the Spicer tornado as the RFD surged and wrapped it in rain.

http://www.vimeo.com/5616479

 

[Ron Riemersma]

Brian Hastings and I targeted NW Iowa and ended up catching up with the SW MN cell near Worthington. We drove north into is to sample quarter size hail, then drove along with it along I90, trying to get ahead of it for 45 minutes or more. Once we finally broke through, we got some interesting shots of the shelf cloud and the forward flank meso in the distance, which Scott referenced. Pics courtesy of Brian.

 

[Bill Doms]

What Scott said....the cell which went from Brookings, SD down into Iowa was a outflow driven mess from the get go. Kinda painful as the Spicer, MN torn was in the next county over from home. Oh well.

Some more pics here.