2011-04-09 Reports: NE/IA

[Zack Hargrove]

Thought you guys might like to see this photo album I put together of progressive video stills from wall cloud to tornado to twin tornadoes. After this, the tornadoes went rain wrapped. These two tornadoes were my first after a little under a year of hunting.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2113153&id=51105633

If you don't have facebook, here are the same pictures on my shutterfly account:

http://zhphotography.shutterfly.com/pictures/595

 

[Ben Tillotson]

Here are some clips of the tornadoes west of and at Early, IA. The tornado at Early starts at about 2:30.

Watch video >

 

[Joel Wright]

Jeremy Ludin, his wife Meghan and myself chased this event. We left the QC around mid morning and made it out to the Desoto Wildlife Refuge around 2 or 3pm. The cap was still holding pretty strongly at this point. We passed the time by playing some long toss with the ol' baseball for awhile.
Finally around 5pm or so we noticed the cumulus gathering along and south of the warm front in eastern Nebraska was beginning take off. We quickly crossed the MO River and intercepted the new cell just north of Fremont NE. Followed the storm back into Iowa near Onawa, where we witnessed the initial dusty spinups/gustnado action. We broke off from the cell briefly to get out ahead of it, and this is around the time when the storm began to become more serious and dropped the Mapleton tornado. We caught back up with it shortly thereafter, and witnessed a nice low-contrast cone tornado east of Mapleton. Darkness was already setting in, but we stayed with it.
The storm cycled numerous times and with the new cylces came new tornadoes. Since it was dark we could only see the tornadoes when the lightning would flash. Luckily for us the electricity with this storm was phenomenal. The inflow into the storm was very impressive as well. It was quite difficult to stand outside and shoot video/pictures of this thing with the winds continually battering us.
Here's a few pics and vid grabs. Will have a full writeup on my site in the next day or two.





　

 

[Josh VandenTop]

did annother edit on my video from the storm, added some footage from before the Mapleton tornado, including the gustnado/tornado whatever it was near Onowa, also made the watermark less annoying on this one, enjoyWatch video >

 

[Zack Hargrove]

Raw Video of the twin tornadoes:

Watch video >

 

[Jeremy Ludin]

Late to report, but figured I would anyway. Full chase report now up here: http://www.furiousskies.com/4_9_11.html

 

[Nick Nolte]

Chalk up another late report. I was also on the Mapleton tornado, and was my first experience being on scene after a town was hit...sobering to say the least. This was also the first chase with my custom built whackermobile mesonet which I collected some non-research grade data on, if anyone is interested in that.

Chase write-up here: http://www.nicknoltewx.com/blog/2011/04/14/april-9-2011-mapleton-iowa/

Mesonet data here: http://www.nicknoltewx.com/blog/2011/04/18/mesonet-data-from-april-9-2011-mapleton-tornado/

 

[Scott Nicholson]

This is long overdue... I've (finally) converted and made available tornado/storm chasing videos from years past and posted them on the Videos page on my website at www.springwx.com. There are several videos available for viewing...and I'm adding more as I find archived storm chase videos in my collection.

There are 3 videos available for this date:

The first video is titled Iowa Nighttime Tornadoes:
April 9, 2011: Even though we missed the Mapleton, IA tornado by only a matter of minutes, our chase did not end. We continued to chase after the supercell that produced the Mapleton tornado...and did that storm put on a show! The supercell gained strength with the onset of the Low Level Jet...and put down massive tornadoes. We caught 4 tornadoes after dark, ranging in size from a stovepipe to a wedge. This video consists of short slow motion clips and video stills when lightning illuminated the silhouette of the tornado.

The second video is titled Northwest Iowa Brush Fire and Gustnadoes:
Prior to the Mapleton, Iowa tornado on April 9, 2011, lightning caused several brush fires in western Iowa, including the one in this video. The smoke was pushed by the RFD (rear-flank downdraft) winds. A few gustnadoes developed along the RFD front, becoming visible as the rotating column picked up dirt and smoke.

The last video for this date is titled Mapleton, IA Tornado Damage:
April 9, 2011: We chased a storm from northeast Nebraska into western Iowa. Unfortunately, the road network in the Loess hills of Iowa is not very cooperative. The Mapleton, IA tornado dropped while we navigated through the hills...and lifted moments before we drove through town. Debris was still falling from the sky while we navigated through the devastated town. I managed to capture the damage caused by the EF3 tornado shown here.