Harrison Cater
EF0
I had been keeping a wary eye on today since yesterday evening. A boundary would provide sufficient SRH and coupled with low LCLs and quite a bit of 0-3km CAPE, it seemed like an environment capable of squeezing out a few tornadoes, especially if a storm was able to latch on to the boundary. And that is exactly what happened. All CAMs fired 1 or 2 discrete supercells on the boundary, however by 3:30 nothing had taken off and I was getting ready to write it off and go do something else. Just as I said this, a nice updraft developed and persisted, so I bit, and headed out west of Shellsburg. I arrived to a very healthy looking base and had excellent positioning for what was to follow.
About 15 minutes later, the base started to really wrap up and it became evident that a tornado was imminent. So I called the NWS as the storm was not warned, and ended up staying on the phone with them through the duration of the first tornado relaying them information, as such I have no video(as I use my phone primarily), but I'd like to think feeding the NWS information was more helpful than video. Here's a picture of the multi vortex Shellsburg tornado. It lasted 5-7min.
The storm proceeded to cycle, do nothing and then cycle again. By this time the storm was between Alburnett and Central City and by sheer luck I came out of a painstaking hookslice(do to locals going 20mph in the RFD) and saw the tornado wrap up. It manifest itself as a stout cone and lasted 4-5min.
The storm now began to have problems with outflow dominance. It cycled again with a brief funnel in the mid levels before the RFD cleared out the base and forced the storm to start from scratch. I decided that I'd back out for some wide angle shots and wasn't disappointed(you can see the new wall cloud and tail cloud starting to take shape.)
The storm tried one last time to get it done here and then proceeded to go OD for good, where I called the chase. Below is just about the closest the final cycle came to a tornado. Just west of Monticello.
I got back and lol'd when I saw the reactionary SPC tornado watch. I thought the day was pretty straight forward and seemed like a classic conditional 2% type of day, so was surprised when there wasn't any risk at all. I seem to have pretty good luck with these local chase thingies.
About 15 minutes later, the base started to really wrap up and it became evident that a tornado was imminent. So I called the NWS as the storm was not warned, and ended up staying on the phone with them through the duration of the first tornado relaying them information, as such I have no video(as I use my phone primarily), but I'd like to think feeding the NWS information was more helpful than video. Here's a picture of the multi vortex Shellsburg tornado. It lasted 5-7min.
The storm proceeded to cycle, do nothing and then cycle again. By this time the storm was between Alburnett and Central City and by sheer luck I came out of a painstaking hookslice(do to locals going 20mph in the RFD) and saw the tornado wrap up. It manifest itself as a stout cone and lasted 4-5min.
The storm now began to have problems with outflow dominance. It cycled again with a brief funnel in the mid levels before the RFD cleared out the base and forced the storm to start from scratch. I decided that I'd back out for some wide angle shots and wasn't disappointed(you can see the new wall cloud and tail cloud starting to take shape.)
The storm tried one last time to get it done here and then proceeded to go OD for good, where I called the chase. Below is just about the closest the final cycle came to a tornado. Just west of Monticello.
I got back and lol'd when I saw the reactionary SPC tornado watch. I thought the day was pretty straight forward and seemed like a classic conditional 2% type of day, so was surprised when there wasn't any risk at all. I seem to have pretty good luck with these local chase thingies.
