5/25/08 REPORTS: MN / WI / IA / IL / KS / TX

[Jim Zandonai]

Might as well start this thread as it will no doubt be added to..
First of this A.M A Strong storm that developed (most likely an non-Tornadic elevated supercell) SW of the Quad Cities moved east all the way into the Chicago region today..
I was monitoring it and decided to intercept it in Lee County..around 1220pm( somehow I always end up there)
So racing south at twice its speed on I-39 I saw it just south of Hwy 30 and turned west) I went about a mile west and then south about a mile..
With cloud-Ground lightning strikes around I was there..The structure wasn't all that impressive but I didn't expect it to be..
I went down a gravel road and then the rain poured in and visibility dropped..suddenly I was pelted by hail of nickel-Quarter size..while trying to film this my passenger car seat was getting soaked...Calling in my report and the storm moved on east ..Hey around here we take what we can get..
Posted a couple quick shots nothing really impressive except the hail !

 

[Chris Hayes]

Originally was going to go down toward DDC because of the lower LCLs. On the way down, I watched as the storm NE of Dodge City finally became dominant. Spent the next few hours adjusting our position, and viewing the action area. Can only confirm one tornado, that being the one a lot of other people have posted pictures and videos of. Awesome to see the dust whirl so far detatched from the parent funnel cloud. Kept waiting for it all to fill in, but it never did. Also saw numerous funnel clouds, and wall clouds. The structure of the storm itself was very nice as well. Another A+ chase day.

 

[Josh Richardson]

Started out the chase back to the SW of Mason City and ended up following a long track wedge near Waterloo until around Dundee. The best we could do is see the massive rotation without ever getting a clear shot of the rain wrapped tornado as we constantly ran into significant damage that would stop us on that path. Some of the worst damage we have seen today was in around the small town of Hazleton where the south end of town had some pretty significant damage, they have a command center setup there now and seemed to have plenty of help from neighboring counties. Due to being in the constant rain while being within a couple miles of the wedge and we never got a chance for any real pictures other than maybe some damage photos. Will go through everything when we get back. We're now heading back towards home and stopping in Parkersburg where we understand some homes are gone and maybe even the high school.

EDIT: We did get back to Parkersburg to see the astounding damage there, we have to come back in the morning though as everyone has been instructed to leave the town and they will set everything up again in the morning at 6 am.

 

[Michael Carlson]

Saw two really brief funnels just south of La Crosse, Kans. and then a 5 min tornado/gustnado that formed just Southeast of La Crosse, Kans.

 

[Derek Weston]

Sat just north of Independence and watched the Hazelton area tornado. (basically not too far NE of Waterloo Iowa)

Not sure I actually saw the wedge -- but saw the area that it was in. (fairly obvious where to look in this photo)

An extremely contrasted photo -- due to extreme HP storm:

 

[Mike Kovalchick]

Another great chase day in Kansas!

2 brief tornadoes in Rush County.

One was well detached from the Meso..well SW of it with a funnel that extended part of the way to the ground with a nice dust whirl/small debris cloud undernealth.

The other was a brief spin up under the meso of the supercell that followed the first. Quite a feat to catch that one..as it was in the middle of mud bog city.

Looking forward to another great chase day in Kansas tomorrow......wow!

 

[matt doolittle]

Wow, chased the cell that went through Parkersburg Iowa and surrounding areas. I was only a few minutes behind it and never did see any tornadoes. DMX took a report from a spotter of a half mile wide tornado and at the same time a mile wide monster a few miles behind it.

I witnessed things today that I never want to see again. KCCI TV is now reporting 5 dead.

Without spotters and chasers giving reports, this would have been much worse.

 

[Tim Marshall]

SHORT: The Marshalls filmed three brief dust whirly, thingys today in Kansas. Two whirlies were near the town of Manning and the other was near Rush Center.

LONG: Target was DDC to Oakley. We headed west on I-70 and had a nice lunch at the Red Sun Buffet in Hays. We then dropped south and headed west on Rt. 4 (we've been on that road the past four days). A cell developed near the CO/KS border and headed for Scott City. It had a classic supercell appearance with sharp anvil and vertical tower. A wall cloud developed, then a DRC, and a brief dust whirl ensued followed by a much stronger dust whirl near the town of Manning. We encountered marble hail near Healy and decided to head east on Rt. 4. Glad to see and meet David Hoadley again.

Several cells merged into this storm and it went down hill, so we picked up that Rush Center cell to the southeast. We saw a dust whirl at the south end of this cell before turning our attention to a new cell that formed on its flank. We punched this core encountering hail to one inch. This new cell produced a rapidly rotating wall cloud just north of Lacrosse. After that, the whole system lined out and became outflow dominant. We ended the chase with dinner at the Applebees in Great Bend watching the TIV going west and chasers going east on Rt. 56, before heading back to base in Salina. TM

 

[Robert Edmonds]

Got a tornado... it's not very clear in the photos but there was associated rotation in the storm. For most of the day I was chasing west of Great Bend, KS. This made up for missing stuff the last few days.

 

[Jason Branz]

Started south out of Norfolk NE around 8:30 a.m. targeting GBD. Got there, checked radar, saw cells to the west, and headed toward Rush Center. Got on the cell coming up into SW Rush County and followed it until it became outflowish as all the storms merged. Didn't have a good view of the tornadoes, but some of the structure south of Rush Center was absolutely fantastic. Messed around with the line of storms for a little while before setting down in GBD. I'm still a slide-film dinosaur, so no pics right now.

- JB

 

[Chris Wilburn]

It looks like Kansas should be added to the reports title as well. I too witnessed two tornadoes in Rush County Kansas near Bison/LaCrosse. The first tornado was a very brief touchdown with no visual condensation funnel to the ground. There was a small dust swirl at the surface that lasted for about 20 seconds. The second tornado came out of the very far left edge of the wall cloud and had a visual condensation funnel up top and a dust swirl at the bottom. This tornado lasted for approx. 5-6 minutes. Before these tornadoes there was a really dark and really low rapidly rotating wall cloud that looked like it could produce a big tornado but it never quite got it going. I have a video clip of the second tornado and a clip of the rapidly rotating wall cloud sped up to 200%. I have also included a digital picture of the second tornado. All in all a good day and can't complain that is for sure.

Second Tornado just south of Bison, KS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp2oRPFIVPk

Rapidly Rotating Wall Cloud just south of Bison, KS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT7Xc363BKw

Picture of torn. just south of Bison, KS

 

[Ben Engle]

I witnessed things today that I never want to see again. KCCI TV is now reporting 5 dead.

Without spotters and chasers giving reports, this would have been much worse.

I'll agree with you on this one. I TRIED to chase the big one, I started out at Waterloo airport and just fell in behind the monster. I only got to stay behind it for about 10 minutes before I started running into massive debris fields and lines down on Dunkerton road. There were live lines down on the highway so I called BH county dispatch and let them know I was an off duty officer blocking traffic. A deputy showed up off duty in his car a little later and me and him started a 'rescue' mission, where we basically made it 4 miles in 3 hours attempting to get to every house we could checking for survivors and/or trapped people. I saw some very very nasty things today that I've never seen before. After awhile the congestion from emergency traffic and rubberneckers got so bad I decided to head home. I didn't get any good storm pictures, and my damage pictures kinda suck. I wanted to take more but the deputy and I were so concentrated on patroling the rural areas checking houses that I kept forgetting to take pictures of the worst damage I saw. It was VERY spooky, I had chills all day. I was wearing my badge to ID myself and I kept getting dirty crying people coming up to me asking me to help them contact utilities and find their horses. As much as I am trained to help it was very hard telling people that unless a person was lost or hurt I had to move on and that it could be days if not weeks before utilities even came close to their areas.

It sounds like Parkersburg is all but completely wiped off the map.

The worst thing I probably saw was a pig farm that was completely demolished. It was a 10 building farm, and the only thing left standing was 1 house. There were two, 500 foot long pig barns that collapsed and killed all the pigs. All the plants in the surrounding fields were basically sucked up and all that was left was perfectly level clean dirt. What was wierd was this farm had the most visual destruction but it was the ONLY residence I checked on all day that still had power, even though the lines leading up to it in all directions where non-existant, as in they had snapped off the broken poles and been thrown miles away. Here's my crappy "in between helping" pictures

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y95/uncleben03/storms/0525081834.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y95/uncleben03/storms/0525081836.jpg

Inside one of the houses I checked on. looked like nobody was home when it hit but EVERYTHING inside the residence had been sucked through doors and thrown about and into the lawn. Nothing else on the property made it through.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y95/uncleben03/storms/0525081841.jpg

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y95/uncleben03/storms/0525081841a.jpg

 

[Joel Wright]

Well Jeremy Ludin and I ended up on the tornado warned cell in Floyd County Iowa near Marble Rock. This storm looked absolutely fantastic for a short bit. Giant rain-free base with a rapidly rotating wallcloud. Just as this storm was about to go crazy the cell of the day to our south was starting to go apes***.

After it was clear that our cell was crapping out, we decided to make a break for the Waterloo cell about 30 miles to our southeast after hearing of the wedge tornado. As it turned out this was the right decision since it was basically the only show in town today. It took quite awhile to catch up to the thing though as we constantly ran into heavy rain and hail and slow traffic. Definitely not the best to try to chase an eastward moving supercell from the northwest lol.

By the time we caught the damn thing, it was near Earlville and Dyersville Iowa. It was still tornado warned but a wallcloud was all that was there. Followed it for quite a ways until darkness fell on us and that was pretty much the end of the chase.

We wanted to play the southern edge of the northern hot zone today, but as it turned out we were a bit too far north.

 

[Matthew K. Hartman]

Some friends of mine and I, too, were on the Bison, KS (Rush County) storm. While this storm may have produced a tornado near LaCrosse (we did observe a fairly nicely sculpted wall cloud from I-70 driving west), but near Bison, the tube here, was very landspout-ish looking and was truly a gustnado.

I have picture and video evidence, but don't have it available right now. The tube came out of a "finger" that happened to develop east-southeastward from the gust-front.

Unfortunately, 3 or 4 tornado reports came from this, according to what we were seeing on SpotterNetwork at the time.

 

[Olivier Staiger]

Kansas

my catch of the day :

and ....

MY catch ? well, no. indeed it is Gene Moore who drove us to that storm . . I am just the photographer .