Alex, if you are interested this is part of an e-mail that I sent out to a local spotting group and some friends from this event:
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As most of you probably know, I am an avid storm chaser and I travel
many thousands of miles a year to find these elusive storms. So when a
tornado occurs practically in my backyard, all of my friends and
family expect me to have seen the tornado, but this was not to be...
I was halfway through 9 holes of golf at the Monona golf course when I
noticed the anvils from the storms to the north west. I almost left my
golf partner at this point to finish up on his own, but I had a great
game going and decided to stick it out. I sprinted out to my car as
soon as my ball finally landed in the 9th cup (a disappointing 3 putt)
and was on my way to Verona to pick up my camera and video gear (I
literally have nightmares about not having a camera when I see a
tornado).
I loaded up a radar loop at home, saw that a decent cell was in NW
Dane county and decided to head west on 18/151 then north on P to
Cross Plains.
As I was traveling north on P off of the HWY, I caught glimpses of a
nice base off to the north west, with a much better looking base
further north of this one. I recall Chad saying that 2 storms were
going to merge in Dane county, in hindsight this was pretty
significant. A supercell that gobbles up a smaller storm moving in
from the south often has a good shot of producing a tornado, looking
back at radar data when I got home verified that this merger was
likely responsible for the tornado in Madison.
I stopped briefly at the intersection of HWY P and S, which is about 8
miles due west of where the tornado occurred. These 2 photos were
taken
at 8:16pm and 8:18pm looking WNW from my location at P and S.
http://www.f5hunter.com/6-23-04/8-16-pm.jpg
http://www.f5hunter.com/6-23-04/8-18-pm.jpg
There was decent cyclonic rotation with this rain free base and it was
creating a lowering as seen in the second photo, but I was drawn to
the base further north that was currently being warned on. (I do not
have a photo of this unfortunately)
I continued north on P into Cross Plains and could see that the base
to the north west of Cross Plains was completely rain wrapped. I
continued north on P into this rain wrapped storm, encountered small
hail with evidence of 1 inch hail on the ground about 5 miles to the
north of Cross Plains. It soon became apparent that this storm was
completely occluded, was falling apart, and that I should have stayed
on the base further to the south. I went back down to HWY 14 and
headed east towards Middleton. I believe I was getting on the Beltline
as Dan was calling out the tornado on the ground further east near
park Street. I continued east on the Beltline in a heavy rain core and
never could see any structure to the east because of the heavy rain. I
gave up the pursuit just west of Cambridge and dropped south on 73
towards N to see if I could get some good lightning shots.
. Technically, in addition to being a tornado outbreak, this bow echo (kind of a serial bow) could be termed a derecho, as it does squeak by the requirements although a couple could be debatable.
