6/1/10 REPORTS: IA/KS/NE/MO

[Jeff Duda]

Chased the total crapfest lineout that formed in E NE and W IA this afternoon. Initially left Ames at around 1 PM with my typical chase partners with a general target of the Council Bluffs area. Outflow boundary from storms straddling the NE-SD border became quite apparent on the way out there. Then, watching KOAX from just off of I-80 north of Avoca, saw the first storm erupt out of the convection that had developed along said OFB and immediately knew it would go supercellular. Dashed west along 80, then through Blair where we zigzagged around towards Tekamah while watching the storm already start to get wrapped and go HP (I don't know if this storm was ever anything other than HP). Saw lots of scud and a fairly meaty wall cloud, but rotation seemed to be minimal. Had to flee south as the wet RFD closed in. Stopped again just north of California Junction, IA just north of Highway 30 between the IA-NE border and I-29 and saw more of the same, but a very impressive CG barrage began there. Some bolts were not far from the car, and we didn't get out. Unfortunately, the Nikon D40 that I ordered last week hasn't come yet so I didn't get a chance to photograph any lightning.

We eventually headed east on I-80 back towards Ames when we saw a few cells north of the interstate near Audubon and Guthrie Center, so we went north and then east on State Highway 44 pretty much all the way back to the Des Moines metro. On the way we drove through a couple of cores, seeing maybe 0.5" hail at greatest and some gusty winds as some sort of microburst/downdraft was clearly visible on KDMX base velocity.

We would've been in position to see the tornadoes on the leading edge of the forming MCS in the Omaha metro area, but it became a game that I didn't want to play: jumping in and out of a squall line/bow echo with inflow notches just to get a 3 second glimpse of a wiener of a tornado that would become almost immediately rain wrapped, but congrats to Tom Jennings who I saw on SN report the first several tornadoes near West Point, NE.

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

Was contemplating going S on I-29 twards I-80 @ 11 AM - but decided to watch for a possible threat in Buena Vista County. Because the SPC moved the warning box farther N by 11 AM. Watching GR3 @ 1:30PM; I noticed a cell go TOR WARN in O'Brien County - in the extreme NW corner of IA. So I shot N up Hwy 71 twards Spencer IA ('shot' in the sense of going no more than 61 1/2 mph - so the IA State Troopers couldn't consider me 'food' - lol!)

The storm was traveling slow enough that I caught up with it - after it dropped a tube some 10 minutes earlier. First tornado of the day. But it was still TOR WARN. Got some quick pictures and followed it on Hwy 18 eastbound. It stayed warned, although it looked like it was all outflow any more.

Fourth chase -and still a bust. But it was fun to get out and give it a try just the same...

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

You'd think after several years of seeing it happen over and over I'd learn, but once again I got suckered into having some hope in today being worthwhile...Seems anytime you get 5000+ CAPES and that type of boundary in E NE, you can pretty much bank on a hurricane like messy line forming...I was wishing initially, that the OFB would be able to stay free of convection, but it was never really able to separate from the convection that formed early in the afternoon; still I hoped something would be able to turn right, and or a new area of expanding CU in C NE would interact and something would move right; for about 15 minutes I thought maybe that was happening near/just South of Columbus, but I watched as the sky started to fill with towers developing EVERYWHERE, one look at that and I knew it was going to be another typical Monsoon and wind producer type day... As nasty as they can be, it's hard for me to get too thrilled over the nasty squalls we get around here anymore, the neatest (and I'm using that word lightly) thing I saw all day was a WAY elevated super small supercell this morning near Tobias, was fun to watch it go up, start spinning and die just as quickly...

Crazy How Quick it Just Evaporated, wish I would have time-lapsed it all, pretty sad this was the highlight of a moderate risk day...

 

[Ryan Pfeifer]

Almost went towards the bubbling CU SE of Omaha at 3, but decided it was too far east for my liking. Sat in Omaha until 4:30 trying to figure out where there might actually be some supercells. The Norfolk cell didn't look all that easy to chase without having any way of getting info in the field. Decided to head to Wahoo to get close to an area in the line I though might become a bit discreet and to be closer to the bubbling CU field in SC Neb. Right as I get near Wahoo I noticed a wall cloud just to the north so I zipped up there. Wasn't much rotation in it and a shelf cloud seemed to over take it from the west. Some wall cloud like structures did redevelop a bit but not nearly as organized. The shelf cloud structures had some fun rotation so I watched those for a bit. They past off to me SE when I notice an area of dirt being kicked up underneath them. It persisted so I tried to get closer but never got close enough to see if it was rotating. It was shaped a lot like a weak spin up and lasted probably 4 minutes but I couldn't see any funnel above it so I think it was just where the outflows from the north and west were meeting. Anyone else see this? It was around 5:20.

Decided to head to Wahoo to snag some WiFi since I was lucky enough to have my sister's laptop, but there was not a Super 8 in Wahoo like Google said and I couldn't find anywhere else. Raced down to Lincoln for data hoping something had gone up in the CU field, but then I found out the linear stuff was the only game around so I went home and was treated to some rather unusual sprawling mammatus lighting. Upon getting home found some impressive video of the Norfolk cell tornado (http://ulocal.ketv.com/_Tornado-2-Cuming-County-NE/video/1083611/62922.html) <<Hopefully that's ok to post here. It just seems ridiculous to make a DISC thread for this day.

 

[Adam Lucio]

Chased with Skip Talbot and targeted the Nebraska City area. That target couldn't have failed more with storms going equal distances west and east of there at the same time. Chose to go after the east stuff but had a hard time catching up on 2 lane IA highways.

Managed to get pretty close to the backside of the storm that produced the nice looking Tingley tornado. Sucked to miss it but at least there was some nice structure on the backside so I didn't come home totally empty handed.

The storms crapped out as fast as they went up so if you weren't there right from the get go there was little hope.

 

[Winston Wells]

I spent the early afternoon in Beatrice, NE waiting for initiation, but almost immediately found myself out of position once storms began to fire. My dilemma was similar to that mentioned above by Adam Lucio - either bust east and try for the storms in southwestern Iowa, or move north through Lincoln and try for the two TOR-warned cells northwest of I-80 during the brief window that they remained discrete. I opted for the latter, and it didn't work. I got as far north as Ceresco, NE on US-77, but by then things were hopelessly linear. I then turned back south to dither around with the tail end of the line in Saline County.

These two photos look west from NE 41 near Clatonia, NE.

 

[Tyler Burg]

Spent most of the morning wondering where storms would initiate, ended up getting on the tornado warned storm north of Blair, had some pretty cool structure at times, a really green core. This storm was a maniac CG producer, never been so close to so many, we were probably within a mile or two of 50 cgs, probably more. First real electric activity I've seen this year. Nice to not have to drive 6 hours home after a chase! More photos: http://www.tonightssky.org/accounts/060110.html

 

[Aaron Shaffer]

We headed to Nebraska City and got there by early afternoon. Ignored the initial convection north of Omaha and eventually realized that the stuff in SW IA was going to begin to fill in. Trying to race east we got stuck by every roadblock known to man... a toll bridge on Hwy 34 across the Missouri, a state trooper on Hwy 34 for a good 30 or so miles, then finally when we got up north to Hwy 92 to head to 25 SW of Des Moines, it was closed... Oh well - saw plenty of jagged downdrafts and some neat cg going on.

 

[Chris Hayes]

We positioned in York, Nebraska for about 45 minutes before deciding to pursue the supercell that got organized after the original tornado warned HP. Heading north out of York we got stuck in road construction for a good 20 minutes. Realizing that another storm or storms had blown up to the south of the storm we were after we checked that storm out for a while and eventually began tailing tail end charlie HPs clear down to Beatrice before calling it a night. We did see one possible funnel SW of Lincoln, but that was about the most of it. Got back to Grand Island and spent 1-2 hours doing lightning photography as storms slid off to the south. The lightning was pretty much CONSTANT with the storms. Got 36 "keeper" lightning pictures so the day wasnt a total waste.

 

[Matthew Crowther]

Decided early on to blow off eastern NE- ended up on a very nice supercell in NE Colorado near Julesburg:

 

[Brandon Sullivan]

Still not sure just exactly how to classify yesterdays chase in eastern Nebraska and western/central Iowa.

We were stationed in Nebraska City, by 3 PM and were just mainly watching the CU field. We met up with Michael OKeefe, Skip Talbot and Adam Lucio and played the ever so fun waiting game..


Our intial concern was the developing cu field to the west across central Nebraska which appeared to be in response to an upper level wave moving through.. We wanted to sit and wait for development, but it just never came.. We were also concerned about the OFB to the north, and whether interaction from it would ignite severe storms ahead of the line.. That was no luck either.


Finally we visually noted CU rapidly building across southwest IA and we began to move that way. We came in behind the intial supercells over southwest Iowa. They had plentiful reports of significant hail. We got an impressive mammatus show as we continued to near.. We saw reports of tornadoes on the other side of the storm, but there was just too big of gap to close the deal for us to get there.. We did get pictures of significant damage to a farmstead however.. A subject there said they had heard their son saw the tornado, and that it was fairly good size.
After this we turned and headed for the apex of the bow that was coming our way. We ended up taking the core, and getting 75+ MPH winds. Semis were blown over right near us on I35 near Lamoni, IA. The wind was very very intense.


Overall, I guess you say sucessful.. Missed the tors by a few minutes, but some awesome mammatus and winds!!

Youtube Video of Winds


​

 

[Skip Talbot]

Never underestimate Iowa's capability to fubar your chase experience.

Chased with Adam Lucio and his girlfriend. We sat in Nebraska City, not sure if we'd catch storms in SE NE or SW IA as there were nice cu fields developing in both areas. After guessing the line near Omaha would transition to a linear mode quickly, we shot east after towers going up in SE IA, but at 40 miles out, us barely being able to average 60 mph, with an easterly storm motion, we just couldn't make it there in time for the brief EF2 that struck Ringgold county. We got a hazy view of the back end of an updraft tower and some mammatus, but could not make it to the base at all due to slow Iowa traffic and road options. To add insult to injury a truck kicked up a rock and cracked my windshield. I'm also not sure what's going on with Iowa's drivers as they have a reputation for being the most ignorant and discourteous, and it never fails every time I drive through there. This time it was a woman driving under the speed in the left lane on 80 yapping on her cell phone, then a pickup truck who refused to let us pass by swerving and speeding up after the highway opened up an extra passing lane.

Miles: 1,010
Iowan drivers who got the finger: 2
Cracked windshields: 1
Tornadoes: 0

 

[Adam Lucio]

Full account now online at: http://www.aerostorms.com/060110-Iowa-storms.php

 

[jshields]

had a pretty fun chase today! i too originally was going to ignore the line up north of omaha, and head for what seemed to be the better target in southeast nebraska. at about 345, i was just getting ready to leave omaha, when the first tornado warning went up north of omaha. i decided to head north since i figured i could drop back south later to catch the storms that would hopefully develop. the stupid missouri river made things tricky for roads and sure enough i ended up on the iowa side of the river near mondamin, iowa, having to wait for the storm as the last reported tornado was about 15 miles west of me near craig, ne. the storm turned right and was heading southeast so i headed down to missouri valley, iowa to wait for the storm. i loved the manageable storm motions and had about 15-20 minutes of time to take pics and video just west of missouri valley as the storm approached. right as we pulled off the road, there was a funnel about half way down to the ground that quickly lifted as i set up my equipment. the storm tried to produce a tornado one more good time before we had to leave as the green hail core approached. we raced down I-29 before having to take a gravel road off the interstate that would allow us to head southeast towards crescent iowa and hopefully avoid the now line of storms. radar was indicating 2-3" hail and we didn't want to lose a windshield! we managed to stay just ahead of the storm by enough to avoid the damaging winds and large hail that came though just behind us. we made it to council bluffs and took shelter in a car wash as another hail core showing 2.75-3.25" hail with a maxed out vil on the radar approached. not sure what was going on with the radar then bc i only experienced nickel sized hail max, when the radar showed the hail core going right over me?! anyways continued south down I-29 eventually heading west on hwy 2 in southeast nebraska hoping for some magic right before dark on the tail end of the line of storms, but nothing happened. here though, i was treated to amazing lightning with some of the longest crawlers i've ever seen! unfortunately couldn't get any good pics as my wife was tired and wanting to be home hours ago

just missed shot of the vicious lightning by missouri valley. it seemed like about every 20-30 secs there was bolt hitting the ground!

funnel forming one more time!

amazing green color

 

[Brad Nelson]

My wife and I actually had a successful chase this day! Chase log with pics/video is uploaded here: http://eyeonthetwister.com/index.php/2010/06/0601/