2025-04-17 REPORTS: NE/MN/IA/MO

[James Wilson]

Yesterday definitely overperformed especially after the cells got past the river. Here's a few photos of the cell that was to the South and then the monster night time wedge.

 

[Randy Zipser]

Here is a link showing neat satellite imagery of "exploding" CBs over NE and IA on 04/17/2025:

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[Tony Laubach]

Yeah, over-performing is probably the understatement of the season so far... intercepted the initial supercell west of Fremont and documented the landspout/gustnado activity there before the haboob-looking thing rolled into Fremont. Had to make a creative escape out of the traffic on the east side of town to NOT get completely clobbered in the hail.

Getting held up there prevented me from getting back to Omaha in time, so I opted to abandon that cell and make a run for the southern cell, catching it just before dark and got an INCREDIBLE view of the tornado near Tabor.

 

[JeremyS]

For some reason I've become horribly lazy when it comes to making reports/videos from my chases. Now that it's December I am finally working on things...
I had a very inactive 2025 chase season unfortunately. Fortunately though for me, this day's chase ended up being one of my all time favorite chases for lots of action including losing my first windshield in 18 years of chasing!
I opted to stay a bit north and go for the first cell west between Columbus and Fremont, NE.
From landspouts to near zero visibility in blowing dust for 10 plus minutes to losing my windshield in windblown tennis ball sized hail, this cell went nuts.
I followed it into Iowa east of Omaha but due to having to drop south out of the big hail and stopping to assess damage to my windshield, I missed the EF-3 tornado that formed about 4 miles north of my house in Omaha!
I then dropped south towards the monster tornado producing storm that moved into southwest Iowa and led to the tornado emergency for Essex, coming around from the east. I was treated to some nighttime amazing structure but was not able to see any tornadoes before they lifted.

I made a chase video here: