2024-04-16 REPORTS: IA/IL/MO/NE

[Andy Wehrle]

Surely someone has a report on the Houghton-Mediapolis, IA EF2, or the cold-core tornadoes that occurred well to the northwest?

Unfortunately, I am not one of them. This joined my long list of "close, but no steak dinner" chases.

From getting off work at noon it was a race to Mt. Pleasant, threading the needle through the first round of storms just before some of them started to go tornado-warned in the Cedar Rapids area (I had no interest in chasing these as they were embedded and flying to the north), then diving south in front of the second round as it fired up in the form of an annoyingly-linear band. However, as I drew closer the two southern cells began to gain a little bit of separation (as reasonably depicted in multiple consecutive HRRR runs in the morning) and went tornado-warned. I dropped south on US-218 in front of the forward flank of the northernmost one, and turned off at IA-16 towards Houghton to check it out.

GoPro snap, westbound on 140th St., just east of 150th Ave. at Mt. Hamill:



What I see here is an inflow tail feeding into a rather ragged, scuddy, not-too-impressive wall cloud that has quite a lot of rain obscuring the area underneath it. I turned left onto 150th Ave. and watched the storm off to my west for a couple minutes, but I didn't see anything that screamed imminently tornadic; that and I didn't like how rainy it was under there, combined with the poor radar coverage I wasn't sure I'd be able to tell where under that base a tornado was forming if one did.

When I saw the tail-end Charlie cell to the south was also tornado-warned, I decided to bail and jump on that one. Of course, it was minutes later that the original cell wrapped up and tornado reports started to come in. Meanwhile, the other cell which I intercepted near Argyle, IA remained quite outflow-dominant and never did anything much of note.



Scuddy pseudo-wall cloud-ish thing with mostly rising motion from US 61 just west of Ft. Madison:



Fortunately, the storm's northeastward movement pretty much perfectly paralleled the Mississippi River in this area, so I was able to cross over at Burlington comfortably ahead of the storm without either getting overrun by the RFD gust front/potentially tornadic region, or having to drive into the forward-flank core. I stair-stepped with the RFD gust front region until Little York, IL where I broke off and let the storm go.

I went back to Monmouth for dinner. The most photogenic sights of the chase, ironically, came from the final round of storms which fired up as a linear band to the west/southwest and went severe-warned while I was eating. There were some noticeable kinks in the line on reflectivity, with subtle velocity couplets colocated with some of them, but none of them ever went tornado-warned. Northbound on US 67 to head home I threaded the needle through a relatively weak spot in these, still catching a brief burst of near-blinding rain and pea size hail. The lightning show was worth the price of admission, though.

 

[Dan Robinson]

I awoke at 7AM in Salina, Kansas and did my morning data check. Where supercells interacted with the warm front in Iowa looked like the best target. The wind fields, though, supported supercells and tornadoes throughout the warm sector in Missouri in two waves of storms. The second wave would develop thanks to a midlevel dry slot that was clearing the skies behind the first wave. Both the first and second waves were shown potentially affecting St. Louis, the better and later ones at sunset, so I wanted to keep my home area within range if that occurred. Overnight supercells that would constitute the first wave of these storms were still in progress, and were now just to my east. I approached a pair of them at Topeka, with the first one already crossing the highway ahead of me.

I just barely beat the second cell to Topeka, but only found a fairly uninteresting RFD gust frunt shelf cloud and not much else in the way of structure.

More supercells and QLCS circulations were approaching from the southwest, and I stayed ahead of these through Kansas City. One of these circulations intensified suddenly near Lathrop, just to my west along I-35. I did not have a visual on it, but I was in the tornado warning polygon. Another circulation began developing at Cameron, Missouri. This had a pronounced RFD surge, and after it passed, a well-defined clear slot was visible. Motion was weak, however.

I moved east on Highway 36 to Hamilton to intercept the next circulation in the line. This one ramped up rapidly as it approached Highway 36, with very fast rain curtains crossing the highway at the leading edge of the RFD:

The circulation center was just to my east here. Southerly RFD winds became intense, possibly as high as 80 or 90mph. Radar showed a tight couplet had developed just north of the highway, possibly right over it, but this was completely rain-wrapped even at my close vantage point. After the circulation faded and moved off to the northeast, I backtracked through the path to see if I could find tornado damage. I found several large tree limbs snapped and pieces of sheet metal in a field along a narrow 100-yard wide corridor on either side of US 36, 3 miles east of Hamilton.

The storms to the southwest were beginning to show signs of organizing, so I moved northeast to Kirksville to get into position. These were struggling against a tendency to line out. I positioned ahead of one along Highway 63 north of Kirksville that had a cold, linear look with strong outflow all along it. The next cell to the southwest looked more isolated, so I moved over to Greensburg to intercept it. This had more interesting structure, with an RFD gust front curling back into where a lowering was evident. Motion in this feature was weak, however.

Storms were moving too fast to keep up with now, so I let this one go and moved south for the next one. The Greensburg cell went tornado-warned just 10 minutes after I left it, but I couldn't see anything due to the dense RFD precip. The next cell at Edina was also beginning to organize, but was high based when I arrived on it. I let this storm go, knowing I wouldn't be able to keep up with it. I had a good view of it to the northeast as it departed. Although it was remaining high based, an RFD clear slot was evident on its southwest flank:

I turned north out of La Belle intending to position ahead of new storms beginning to develop to the southwest, just as models had indicated. About 7 miles north of town, a turkey on the east side of the road took flight.

I hit it squarely on the right side of the windshield, creating a massive 6-inch deep crater spanning the entire height of the glass as shards exploded inward. The turkey had wedged against the hail guards, bending the main rails upward before it managed to free itself and somehow fly away.

My chase was done.

I immediately started looking for options to replace the glass, but it was just after 5PM and nothing was open in Quincy (the closest metro area that had any auto glass shops). With the driver's side of the glass thankfully still intact, I could see reasonably enough to slowly make my way south at 35mph on back roads (having to ford a creek at one point).

New storms were continuing to form to my west and southwest, and I wanted to avoid them out of concern for water damage. I managed to get south of the closest one at Palmyra, with was high-based and not doing much that made me want to stay and keep shooting.

Another high-based supercell organized to my west at Bowling Green, which I could see flickering in the twilight. At this point though, I was more concerned about getting home - so I let it go.

The damage to the hail shield rig was limited to the main rails, meaning the repair will be very simple: just two new rails and some drilling for the holes. And other than the glass cleanup and the cost of the new windshield and sensor calibration, there were no other effects to my car or equipment. All in all, this could have definitely been much worse, and I'm thankful for that.

 

[James Wilson]

Dan's report is almost exactly the same as mine even waking up in Salina after four hours of sleep. The only difference (other than the bird) is I was in front of the cell that went tornado warned near Greensburg. I was near Highway T and 15 and though I saw the reported "tornado" I could not tell if it actually touched the ground. It ramped up nicely and did a similar attempt near Luray MO where a tornado COULD have touched but again I could not tell. I followed the cell to Burlington and called the chase.

I feel I do a good job of being on the correct cell most of the time but not this day. Maybe it was a bit of being tired from driving solo for 30 hours but I really wished I was 30 miles north instead to see the nice tornado near Houghton. Congrats to all that scored especially near the low! On to the next chase ....