4/3/11 REPORTS: KS,IA,IL,MO

[Verne Carlson]

On the road so just a brief video of the gustnado north of Lawrence, KS today.

Mods: please change to Reports thread

 

[Derek Weston]

Chased one of the cells that passed north of Iowa City. Decent rising motion, but little to no rotation. Thankfully got on a halfway discrete cell in its early stages and grabbed some decent structure. Nice way to kickoff the 2011 season.

 

[Danny Neal]

What a nice first chase of 2011! I had targeted far SE IA and was off by about 50 miles. Storms developed as expected in the area, but were further N and W than I figured. I thought the cap would hold convection off until 7 P.M., but to my delight explosive deep convection occurred just after 530 P.M. near Oskaloosa, IA. A tornado watch was quickly issued and severe thunderstorm warnings for wind and hail were flying off the presses. With such wide T/Td depressions I knew we were going to be in trouble tornadic wise. Veered winds with spreads around 85/60 will give you some nice structure, but not much in the way of low level rotation. Nevertheless as we caught visual of the supercell north of Sigourney the storm decided to defy odds and lower its' base. A big bell shaped lowering was developing and drawing in scud from the rain cooled air to the right. Heavy rain and hail were falling in a tight corridor and a classic rain free base followed. A couple of other storms grabbed our attention to the southwest, but our storm proved to be the one worth sticking with. I got over 15 minutes of footage of the updraft region of this supercell. I wouldn't say this storm came close to producing or even exhibited moderate rotation, but was visually incredible. As the first area of interest was dissipating, a new one developed just to the right of this and actually looked very good for a couple of minutes. The base lowered dramatically and there was good rising motion into it. We tried to keep up with it, but other storms were absorbed into this one and our view of the feature was cut off. After that we decided to go core punching the storms to our south and found them to have more bark than bite. For a 2 minute stretch we had windblown nickle hail at I would guestimate 35 mph. We then grabbed a bite to eat in Mt. Pleasant and decided to call it a chase. I was never totally convinced of a tornado threat today, I knew there would be hail stones o plenty and the possibility of great structure (High CAPE days usually do!) On the scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the greatest.... I would rate this chase a 3.5. Bring on the next round of severe weather!

​

 

[Connor McCrorey]

Here's a short clip of mine of the gustnado Verne posted above. This thing was huge, but I'm fairly certain there was nothing tornadic about it with cloud bases like that and no discernible rotation above.
Watch video >

 

[Christopher E. Kincaid]

Mods: Please add IL to the thread title

Wishing I would have just gone into IA rather than hanging back in IL then going after the storms fired. I would have caught the initial stages of the storms like Danny did. Good job Danny.

I caught a supercell with a nice wall cloud right at sunset near West Branch, IA just off I-80. Rising motion, but little rotation...

On the way home I caught some wicked lightning in IL!

 

[James Wilson]

We headed out to Platt City to meet our group and then headed West once the cell started around Junction City. We were on the same monster gustnado around Perry as everyone else but back a ¼ mile or so. I have a few photos from that distance that show the clouds above it (I need to learn how to post them on here). There is a look of circulation to the clouds and the gustnado may have had a slight rotation to it but it was never violent so no tornado. It was a truly an amazing sight regardless of its classification. With that said it still made our chase as I have never seen one that big.

 

[Robert Hettchen]

Met up with Bart Comstock and Brian Depriest Sunday afternoon in Eureka, Ks hoping for a dryline storm. While that didnt happen storms did fire right at dusk on the surging cf. Sitting on a hill just nw of Euraka as the storms fired just east of wichita I was working on a few lightning pics when a huge fire broke out. The glow from the fire lit up the storms moving in. In an incredible way! We had never seen anything like it. Here are a few pics...................

 

[Jim Saueressig]

Looking NE quite a while after sunset at the South end of one of the hook appendages that had reached out to the separated shelf / outflow boundary. They were each causing the shelf to bow around and start wrapping up at that point. The shelf came in pretty high but it was still a nice sight in spite of it already being pretty dark at that point. This was shot extremely wide at 10mm as it was passing over me which gives you an idea just how high it was. This was shot just NE of Lebo in Osage County.

 

[Dan Robinson]

With the target consistently moving farther north/west and the veered surface/unidirectional winds never allowing things to look appealing in IA/IL/MO, I elected to pass on a long-distance chase on Sunday. I instead went out on a short 30-mile circuit to chase lightning from O'Fallon to Highland, IL as the action moved in before sunrise. ( Photos )

 

[Steve Polley]

Got on the storm of the day I guess you could call it that near Lawrence KS just before dark. I was positioned just west of the 59/24 junction when the gustnado formed just to my southwest on the south side of US 24.

Here is the video

Watch video >

This video is of the golf ball hail that fell in the KC metro area later that evening.

Watch video >

Not a bad chase day considering the type of storm it was.

 

[Adam Lucio]

Was on the IA storms. Amazed at how fast they developed and was treated to some pretty nice structure and some hail up to quarter size. Overall I was pleased considering the low expectations I had on the day and it reminds me why you should always take the gamble because you never know what you are going to get.

Full log here: http://chicagoillinoisstormchaser.com/040311-Beautiful-Iowa-Storms.php

 

[Joel Wright]

Guess I'll try this again. I somehow lost all that I had just typed. So this is the very short version I guess. Sat near Washington Iowa for several hours waiting for initiation. Intercepted the southernmost cell west of Sigourney. Cloud bases were pretty high, with several wall cloud cycles. No tornadoes today, but the storm structure was nice. All in all not a bad first chase of the season.

 

[Scott Blair]

I've created a page with photos and descriptions from the initial supercell that tracked from Topeka to North Kansas City during the evening of 4/3/11. The highlight was an intense surface vortex, best classified as a strong gustnado, that occurred near Williamstown, KS. This feature was strong enough to flip over two center pivot irrigation systems, destroy a large shed, and snap numerous tree limbs within its path.

http://www.targetarea.net/apr311.html

 

[Scott Hammel]

I too chased in eastern KS Sunday with Tony Laubach, and Jason Squared (Burns and Groenhof). We had targeted Topeka that morning and jumped on the first cell that fired which later produced the impressive gustnado. Unfortunately we didn't see that as the storm blew over us and left us in its wake. Poor road options and the storm speed forced us to give the cells that formed behind it a chance and we actually got a pretty decent hail intercept in the town of Allen. Wish we could've seen the gustnado but overall a fun first chase for the year.



Full write up and photo's on my website right HERE

 

[Danny Neal]

http://nrnilstormchaser.blogspot.com/2011/04/april-3rd-2011-chase-recap-southeast.html - Final chase account is up including more pics and video! Bring on Sunday!