2015-06-24 REPORTS: IA

[Winston Wells]

This was my third chase in Iowa in six days, and probably the most enjoyable. I ended up chasing the cluster of severe and tornado-warned storms that fired a bit north of I-80 west of Des Moines and saw some amazing structure. Yet again morning convection made for a tricky forecast, but it eventually became clear to me that the only part of the target area - essentially the whole state early on - that might work would be in the southwest along U.S. 34. A warm front was slowly moving north and the region was ripe with various boundaries, so I waited for the cap to break with many, many other chasers in and near Osceola, IA.

Eventually storms started to fire, but further north than I expected. I waited a bit to see if southwest Iowa would go - the parameters here were through the roof - but I then decided to head north on I-80 for the storms that had initiated. They gradually were SVR-warned by NWS-DMX, and then in quick succession three areas of circulation gained TOR-warnings. Many chasers wisely targeted the western-most embedded cell, but I was closer to the eastern two circulations, so I stayed with them. After moving west on U.S. 6 through Adel, I moved down to westbound I-80 and then headed south toward Earlham, IA. Between here and Winterset, IA the eastern part of the complex put on a great structure show. Here are a few pictures I took between these two towns. The view is to the west in all of them.

 

[JeremyS]

Went out for the first time in a month, and man it was nice to be out chasing again! Sat in Creston Iowa waiting for something to hopefully pop in the best surface environment, but the cap held. Finally a bunch of storms went up just north of I-80 and when we realized these were going to be the show we headed north. Picked the middle cell of the 3 and it ended up being the first one to go tornado warned. Headed north of Stuart and into the notch of the of the storm. Briefly saw a nice wall cloud but other than that never saw anything that was too close to producing. Kept dropping south with the storm before heading west to meet the westernmost cell that was also tornado warned. By the time we met up with it the hook on the storm was gone and the tornado warning was dropped shortly thereafter. We started to head towards Omaha, but the back edge of the storms put on a nice structure show for a while complete with another small wall cloud and a striated updraft. Finally headed home when the last storm weakened again.

 

[Winston Wells]

Here's a short 4x time-lapse of the Winterset, Iowa thunderstorm's structure as it passed over me a few miles south of town on U.S. 169. The view is to the west.