4/6/10 REPORTS: IA / MO / KS / OK

[Jeremy Ludin]

Joel Wright and I intercepted the Grinnell, IA cell. It's a bit late, I'm tired from driving all day yesterday and today, so I'll make it short.

We started off playing the triple point east of Des Moines in a town called Bondurant. After a while we punched NE in hopes the cu field would explode along the warm front, but it never happened. We did experience a pretty cool experience though. After strong southerly winds all day long, a sudden blast of cold air from the north caught us off guard. The sudden change in temperature was something else.

We dropped further south after seeing development and ended up venturing for the southern cell south of Grinnell. Just outside of town, we noticed a lowering. We should have stayed on the road we took pics on as it would have put us in perfect position. Instead we punched further south. By that time there was a very pronounced rotating wall cloud with a definite funnel. We pushed west toward Lynnville in hopes of shooting back north to position ourselves better. Instead, once again, we ran into dead end after dead end. By that time the RFD had overtaken us (with 1"-1-1/4" hail). We punched back north through Grinnell only to see downed trees, bend sheet metal, and street signs bent over. According to the reports, an 80 mph wind gust was reported. Judging by the swath, that is believable. It was a somewhat wide path. I'll always wonder though after seeing what we saw. Pretty frustrating.

 

[MatthewCarman]

Me and my brother left late after I debated chasing large hail and we were on highway 6 when 3 fire trucks passed us and blocked the road. Just ahead of us were down power lines. One person was trapped in his/her car waiting for help because of a power pole sitting on top of the car. This was my 3rd chase and I left late again but we intercept Nickel to Quarter Size hail just east of Newton. Nothing worth chasing though. There was a 75 MPH wind gust reported near Brooklyn and Grinnell is without power. Reports of lot's of trees down in Grinnell. Tennisball size hail fell near the Waterloo Airport.

 

[Joel Wright]

Storm competition really screwed us today. Had an excellent view of a quickly developing wall cloud south of Grinnell before the cell to the south cored us with near golf ball sized hail near Lynnville. We made an effort to try to catch back up with the storm, but it was a completely futile effort. In trying to catch back up with that cell we drove through Grinnell and found the damage that had just occurred. After reviewing the radar, I'm seriously wondering if a weak tornado passed through a portion of the city. Hopefully the Des Moines NWS does a damage survey.

Here's a picture of the wall cloud right before we got cored by the cell coming up from the south.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Sat on highway 30 for 3 hours north of Belle Plain or something like that in central Iowa. You could literally see the warm front eventually as a thick layer of stratus and scud on the western horizon. I've made the mistake of leaving warm fronts too early before the storm actually has a chance to interact with it and dropping south, so I made it a point today to stick to the warm front like glue. Eventually intercepted the tornado warned cell that produced the damage in Grinnell but was unimpressed. It must have gone downhill quickly after producing the prolific hail and winds as it was just a scuddy mess by the time it hit Highway 30. Tried to keep up with it, but Scott Weberpal and I got stuck behind an oversized load truck that was traveling at 40 mph in a 65 mph zone. I eventually gave up in Cedar Rapids and started the journey home.

I almost didn't chase today, and was very concerned those SW 850's would kill the day but hoped that maybe the warm front could compensate. Turns out that was not the case. This storm went mushy fast and everything else was completely linear. A southward sinking warm front (is that even still a warm front?) and SW 850 flow is likely what killed the tornado chances today.

One shot of the supercell approaching Cedar Rapids.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

Chased 'solo' in a convoy with Adam Lucio, Scott Bennett, and LB LaForce today in Iowa. Stuck to our game plan and stayed south and caught the supercells blowing up shortly after birth.

Adam and I found some 1 inch hail and some awesome structure, along with the overturned semi on I-80.

This is Adam holding a handfull of 1" hail

Will have a full write up on my website at http://www.benholcomb.com tomorrow!

 

[Skip Talbot]

Just a quick note tonight, will post pictures and video later. I chased solo but wound up caravanning with Mike Brady. We intercepted a severe warned storm south of Malcom, IA, and followed it north of 80 where it became tornado warned. There was a cell merger at the time. The cell merging from the south was very high based and rather poor in appearance. The northern, and dominant cell had a nice looking wall cloud that was obscured by rain from the merger, and I was hoping things would really take off, but the storm seemed to go outflow dominant for the rest of its life afterward. We tracked the storm north of Cedar Rapids at ludicrous speed following (I believe) Roger Hill, where we lost it due to storm speeds and lack of road options. The storm regained its tornado warning there, but all I could see from the west was a gigantic mess of scud under the base. Until I see otherwise, I'm thinking those were scud funnels that got reported near Cedar Rapids. Nice meeting Derek Weston, Jared Farrer, and crew, and of course fun times converging with the usual suspects.

 

[Jeremy Den Hartog]

Not really much new to add - got on the storm just as it went tornado warned north of I-80 and saw a possible wall cloud but everything went linear very quickly...not to mention the storms were pretty much impossible to keep up with. Oh well still fun and good to be out chasing again but a bit dissapointing also..

 

[Adam Lucio]

Today was a great chase. We played the setup about as best as you could.

We didn't get suckered into the junk storms north of the warm front and were able to make great intercepts on the dryline storms that formed. I think veered surface flow [as well as at 850 like Andrew mentioned] are what prevented these storms from dropping amazing tornadoes. Despite that, the structure was great and the quarter size hail was fun. Once the chase was over we detoured to I-80 to document some damage.

Full report will be available in a day or so.

 

[Ryan Pfeifer]

Spur of the moment chase after getting of work early at 2pm in Omaha. So much for 3pm initiation . Threw me off a bit and ended up chasing the Cu field north of the warm front. Had no laptop or anything, but headed back south from Tama and hit the storm. Saw hail core headed my way, tried to get west but got hammered. Golf ball size hail and at least 70mph winds. Actually the scariest moment of my chasing career due to having no idea what these storms looked like / were doing. Seems like I always end up in a down-pour with 70mph+ winds. At least this one had a bird in it (reminded me of the cow in Twister). Also saw 5 high profile vehicles over-turned/in a ditch in about 2 miles on I-80 on the way back to Omaha.

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

A fun day in E Kansas for us! We intercepted a mean outflow dominant storm near Osage City, KS that blasted us with golfball sized hail and some very strong winds. We then dropped south to Emporia for some dinner before heading south to wait for possibly development on the KS/OK border. A storm developed but didn't get going until after dark when it got its act together near Yates Center, KS and had pretty good structure with big meaty inflow tail, nice corkscrew updraft and some good inflow.

I will finally get my videos from the last few days up including the hail video from yesterday and the funnel from Sunday later today.

 

[Rob H]

Met some great people this week, and it was a nice way to kick off the season. The only downside being that our chase vehicle had some issues and stranded us in Bethany, MO on Monday night (big thanks to the guys that pulled back from Maryville to help us out).

Because of the car repairs, we got a little bit of a late start on Tuesday and couldn't make it deep enough into Iowa in time, so we decided to check out some of the bigger cells coming through Kansas City. A few other chasers had the same idea and a group of us found ourselves under the canopy at a little gas station in Lawson, MO waiting for the hail core to intercept us. We saw some dancing around with slight rotation trying to pull upwards, in a field right where the inflow/outflow interchange was. 30 seconds later 1/2-1" hail started pelting us. Where the "playful winds" were tracking, power lines were knocked down and a free standing shed or two were demolished.

 

[Brendon Lindsey]

Well, an additional bust for 2010. I left with my buddy from Tahlequah headed towards Ponca city. Around three or so, NWS hyped NC OK so I headed closer to I-35. At HWY 60 and I-35 I met the "storm chaser" group with the new rhino lined TIV. I shook joel and reed's hands just to say I have. I watched the cells struggle to explode, but any base that formed on the Oklahoma side was breaking up in the middle of the updraft and looked holey. I said wth and went towards Winfield, KS but it was too late, the storm I was headed towards raced NE at 50mph. About dark, a new MD was issued for NE OK. I was headed on my way to Sedan KS, and stopped to take pictures of the storm forming to my SW, and a HWY Patrol stopped and said he would escort me to the SE side of the storm, we continued at about 85mph on probably a 65mph road =D. The storm had an awesome updraft and from what I could tell from the lightning the base looked like a mesocyclone base...

Overall the day completely blew. I wasted 60 bucks that I dont have, skipped class, and delayed my studying for this mornings test until 2 am. The most exciting thing I saw, an escaped cow on the road that was scared by a semi and darted through a barbed wire fence into another farmers land haha... OUCH inbetween like the two wires. ha I may post that video of the cow.

 

[J. Sims]

This was my first chase. I had read that the storms really wouldn't fire up till 3pm. I got a text message about 130 or 2 saying Council Grove was under a severe thunderstorm warning. So I left home and saw that it was firing up around the Strong City area in Chase county so I drove down there. On the way there I got these.

I hit hail in Strong City as I was turning around to get home for class.

 

[James Hammett]

We were on the tornado-warned cell of the day as it blasted out of Grinnell towards Cedar Rapids. It became more isolated and we thought it might finally have a shot at putting down a tornado but we could never catch up enough to see it if it had. Apparently it funneled a few times but with all the low-hanging scud typical of a setup like this it was tough to make anything out. We stopped in Cedar Rapids for some dinner and sampled pea-sized hail a couple of times as the cold front caught up with us. Later we saw several semis and vehicles that had been blown off of I-80 in the Grinnell area.

The Grinnell storm apparently hailed on four runners who were caught outside:

http://www.kcci.com/weather/23077072/detail.html

Now imagine how things would go if it was hailing baseballs and you were "seeking shelter" in a ditch from a tornado. Yikes.

 

[Randy Denzer]

We pulled into Perry to eat mexican food with Reed and the gang last night after traveling 1600 miles with no convection (this includes the Arklatex chase the other day!) Started in Woodward, went to Norman then up to the Ok/Ks line. We almost didn't stopfor dinner so we could make the 400 mile treck home. Tony Cook met everyone in Perry to tail us on the long night trip. Good thing we stopped for dinner! Just After leaving Perry, we saw the most insain lightning show for there not being much on radar. Started calling Aaron Dooley and Eric Burns to see if they could see it from the south since they where only 40 or so miles below us. Found a nice place to stop and watch the show and then the cell exploded to our west. Watched it form a nice wall cloud then drop a decent cone funnel. What a blast driving south trying to keep in front of that line. IT was great to see everyone. Had a great time in Woodward eating with David Drummond and crew. It was nice to finnaly run into James Kincaid, Thanks for the Vino James! It really helped me get a great night sleep! And get a haircut!
I will be working to pull some screen shots after I catch up on sleep! Got in at 4:30 am..