When I think a "perfect chase", I look for three things... tornadoes, good hail, and lightning photos... in the rare instances I can check all three of those boxes on a single day, I call that a perfect chase. And one of those rare instances occurred in... god, here I go again... freakin' IOWA.
My chase partner, Ed Grubb, and I departed from Goodland, KS the morning of, drove to Topeka with our initial target being Fairview, KS; we stopped for fuel and a quick bite at the Loves on US-75 on the north side of Topeka, and with a look at surface obs, noted the better backing winds further to the north, so we decided to make a run for Nebraska City, NE with the idea of storms into those better backed winds from the southwest, thus we were now targeting southwest Iowa.
We watched this storm bubble up to our north as we cruised up US-75; and aside from a brief 10-minute stop for a live hit for AccuWeather in Dawson, we basically followed this to Nebraska City and cut across the river into Iowa and connected up on I-29 north. This storm was intensifying rapidly, and we figured we were going to roll in on the backside of the core enroute to an east/west road. We actually came in the south side of the core, and took a sprinkling of tennis-balls. Per usual, there was a conglomerate of vehicles parked beneath an overpass (I believe we were between McPaul and Barlett). As we were approaching the overpass, my chase partner, who had the window open about 5 inches while shooting video of vehicles on the side of the highway, took one of those 2-inchers directly on the arm. Aside from a nasty bruise and a goofy noise he made captured via audio only, he was okay. We found a spot well off the highway near the overpass to await traffic enough where we could ultimately proceed. Fortunately most of the hail in terms of amount falling was to our north, so while there were some biggums coming down, they were very scattered. Many were easily in the 2-2.5" range here.
Once the core cleared I-29, traffic started moving again and we proceeded up to the Barlett exit, taking County Road J10 east toward Tabor. We were perfectly running with the storm as it really began to take shape. We continued east to north/south County Road L63, eventually working our way up to US-34 toward Red Oak. It would finally get tornado-warned.
We hopped on IA-48 northbound out of Red Oak, stopping between there and Elliott when we did a live hit, then proceeded further north. During our haul north is when this storm finally put down. Unfortunately for us, it did so while we were moving through the worst terrain on this route, trees and hills blocked our view more times than not, but we had a view of the funnel/tornado through most of the drive. It's up for discussion as to when this made its 30-second kissing of the ground as I haven't seen anything I can match up with our timing, but alas, there it was.
We stuck with the storm a little longer, but saw both visually and on radar that this storm was on its way to the graveyard, so we eventually parted ways and retraced our steps back to the south and west to position for the tornadic cell coming up from the Nebraska City area. By the time that storm got into intercepting range, darkness had fallen and the tornadic threat had sharply decreased. Before all went into darkness, the sunset and mammatus were a worthy stop for our last hit of the night.
Somewhere along IA-184 east of Tabor, we got through some rain on cells ahead of the main (now) line and were watching nearly constant CGs in just about every direction. Shortly before the junction to US-275 south of Tabor, we stopped off on a dirt road and set up for about 45 minutes of (mostly) rain-free lightning photography.
I collected a couple dozen frames with good CGs, nothing I would rank as the best I've ever shot, but I won't complain. Just being able to sit in one spot for that length of time and shoot away was so nice. The challenge was pointing in the right direction as the CG activity seemed to shift from one cell to another in our south view. While I nabbed many shots, there were a lot of good ones that happened out of frame, many which you can see the illumination on the far side of the frame where the bolt hit just out of view. As the storms continued to congeal, rain began to hamper the view of most of the CG activity, so I broke down the setup and we made our way to Lincoln for the night before returning home to Colorado.
Again, Tony's Trifecta in full effect. Hail... CHECK. Tornado... CHECK. Lightning... CHECK. None of the above will get into a Top 10, but when I gauge a perfect chase, checking off all three of those boxes will do it every time. Was so nice to be on a storm we could easily keep up with, which allowed for several lengthy stops to photograph and enjoy. Our forecast in the morning gave us a prime opportunity to shift our target a bit north to account for what we considered better backing winds, and we made it in time to see the birth of this storm and enjoy all the fruits to which came with it.
It took 20 years to break my Iowa curse, that began with a rain-wrapped, but clearly obvious, tornado in northwest Iowa in August 2021. Since then, I've continued to beat away any remnant lingering effects of said curse. I think obliterate is the best word I could choose for the curse for the Ottumwa tornado a couple weeks back, and this chase, the next one in the state, seems to mean it was no fluke. In a weird way, it takes a little bit of the fun away from coming to Iowa for storm chasing as I can no longer play with the curse aspect of it. Alas, I am happy to finally see success in a state that for 20 years, always managed to get the best of me.
