6/21/07 REPORTS: NE / SD / KS / IA / MN / MO

[matt doolittle]

Got off work in time to get to a TOR warned cell in Wright County (IA). Experienced 60+ winds and very heavy rain. Managed to get a few shots of the warned cell between downpours. Story County went Tor warned shortly after this. Storm there was moving too fast and too far away to catch. It was still good to get out in the weather.

http://photos.yahoo.com/mdvoodoo

 

[Danny Murphy]

06/21/2007: Chase Report MN/IA/MO/IL/NE/SD

My day started around 4pm planning on staying at home and watching the torrential downpours hit Stanley, later that afternoon on 06/21/2007. Then the storms started picking up in intensity in and around the Waterloo, Iowa, area. A few of them became tornado warned, something that was not supposed to take place, but it did. Multiple reports of rotation and possible wall clouds took place from Waterloo to Jesup to Independence. I decided to beat these slow moving storms by heading south towards Jesup so I can place myself on the southern edge of these possible supercells. As soon as I got a few miles west of Jesup on old Hwy 20, I could see why there were tornado warnings out for this storm. This storm had reports of producing a possible EF0 tornado near Evansdale, Iowa. During my chase I viewed a wall cloud about 4 miles NNW of Jesup and many areas of rotation NE of Jesup. There were parts of this complex of storms that resembled outflows or shelf clouds and other areas that had very familiar cloud formations that closely resembled wall clouds, but I was too far to view if the "wall cloud" had rotation, but other spotter groups said that the rotation was present with funnels. I sure could have used my chase partner, Derrick Murphy, but he had to go to work and that left me all by myself to chase this event. No tornadoes were spotted around Jesup, but many areas of rotations were spotted by me and other various spotter groups, i.e. fire depts, etc. As I stated earlier, these storms were very slow moving that caused many areas of rotation to become rain wrapped. This slow moving storm event caused Dunkerton, Iowa, to get 3" of rain in about an hour or less. I got some nice video of this event, but in my haste to find that right spot to view these storms, I forgot to take some stills, so I have no pics for this post.

 

[Van DeWald]

Decided to chase in southeast South Dakota after getting off the mid shift. Saw a lot of garbage and decided to not follow it further southeast into Iowa. I headed west to intercept storms that would either develop across western South Dakota or northern Nebraska. Stopped at a rest area to sleep for 1/2 hour, then trudged on. Decided to bag on the Black Hills stuff when I saw the storms firing about 80 miles to my south in northern Nebraska. Was playing catchup the whole evening. The first shot is the storm from about 50 miles away, taken around 643 pm, but about 20 minutes after the warning was issued for Keya Paha county. This was when the storm was over Springview.

It was also at this point that my cell connection dropped out, thus no more radar for the rest of the night.

Finally caught up with the storm as it was tornado warned, but had to come in from the north side. Core punched it (I know, bad idea without radar, but was using NWR and a blank GR3 for positioning) with quarter sized hail, and ended up just southeast of the meso. I never did see a tornado from this storm, but this was about as close as it got I think. I did see a nice persistent wall cloud that I followed for about 1/2 hour or more, and did see an occasional funnel. The picture below was taken around 901 pm, about 15 southeast of Basset, NE.

Snapped the picture through the car window as the inflow was breezy, not severe, but there was also some CGs very close, thus didn't want to take a chance. Don't think this was a touchdown as I didn't see any swirl of dust on the ground, but who knows.

All in all, over 600 miles, and almost 24 hours without sleep, except for the 30 minute rest break earlier in the afternoon. Not bad, wish it would have been more.

 

[Kory Hartman]

We have had a very long day. SevereStudios.com Chase Team members Kory Hartman and Kenny Allen chased throughout the day.

It began with a morning chase to Onida, SD. We went from Potter County all the way to Hutchinson County. Strong supercell with shelf cloud. Multiple lowering funnels, wind, very large hail near White Lake, softball size.

Later in the day we drove to central NE, and intercepted the supercell that created a long lasting wall cloud. Multiple funnels, hail, lightning, some wind gusts, but no confirmed tornado.

Complete recap coming tomorrow.

Short Video clips now up at www.SevereStudios.com

Thank you to everyone who supported us tonight, by watching, forecasting, or just shooting an email of encouragment.

-Kenny Allen and Kory Hartman

 

[Bill Doms]

Long drive for a very small storm after work into south central MN. Missed the first round but was worth it as my daughter made her first trip (over an hour from home) with her dad and brother. She loved every minute of it.

http://www.mnwxchaser.com/07june21.html

 

[Josh Richardson]

Targeted Algona IA for initation yesterday along the OFB and thats right where it started. This area of initiation quickly formed two cells with supercell characteristics but figured the southern would end up taking over so dropped down to that one followed through half of Hancock Co. Persistent but weak rotation was evident on this one with some decent attempts at a nice wall cloud early in the show but after about 8 miles of travel it started to become outflowish. Early on in the storm I thought it was going to tornado but never could quite do it. In the meantime the Southwest Cerro Gordo cell(became the Waterloo TOR warned cell) was visible from birth during our chase of the Hancock cell as well and we ended going back south to split right in between the line of storms that started at Kossuth CO. and dropped into Wright Co. and the Cerro Gordo cell. Anyway, during driving between those two points of interest we had decided to go after the Wright Co. cell(the southern cell in the line) as it was starting to take on the most supercellular characteristics and golfballs to baseballs had now been reported. After finally starting to get into position very near Clarion IA it too started to line out and just become outflowish and we apparently just missed the brief touchdown between Eagle Grove and Clarion. Started to head towards Hamilton and Story Co. cells after that but decided it was all lining out and just headed home.

I will add pics this weekend.

 

[Mike Umscheid]

Bassett, NE Supercell

Vince Miller and I arrived in eastern Cherry County, NE by mid-afternoon to very promising conditions for supercells… strong southeast winds, warm temperatures well into the 80s and dewpoints around 65-66 degrees. The mid level winds were also sufficient around 30-35 knots or so for deep layer bulk shear values around 45-50 knots or so. We took a very scenic one-lane paved road northwest towards the Merriman Reservoir southwest of Valentine where we awaited convective initiation. Data and observations were suggesting initiation was imminent just to our northeast back near Valentine, so we opted to head into town where we re-fueled and began the chase. We realized we needed to head southeast on US-20 (instead of due east out of Valentine) with incredible convection off to our due east. This storm exploded right in front of our eyes about 25-30 miles east of us. We arrived on-scene to a well-developed dark base wth lowerings off to our north-northeast from near Long Pine. Rotation was definitely evident, but somewhat broad at cloud base. Rear-flank downdraft clear slots would develop and fill in, redevelop and fill back in…cycling new circulations quite often. This would be the story with this storm… there just wasn’t quite enough low level wind shear to get the job done it appeared, but boy it was close.

We came to a stopping location again a few miles up the road just outside of Bassett where we were really close to the back edge of the old occluded portion of the storm with high contents of cyclonic shear. Cloud rotation would be strongest, and in more than one spot on the cylonic shear side of the rear-flank downdraft/occlusion downdraft area. I thought there was indeed a potential for a brief tornado from one of these old mesos if it just stretched vorticity enough. We saw several small funnels from this intense area of cyclonic shear on the backside. Our surface winds were fun to observe… out of the northwest… quite warm too… and extremely gusty/variable in speed. For a brief moment, we had wind speeds around 40-50 mph from the northwest… that were warm… only followed by dead-calm winds about a minute later!! This told me that it was trying really hard at the surface to tighten a circulation to potentially tornado scale. Again… it was close, but no cigar there just outside of Bassett.

We continued south on Hwy 183 about 8 mile south of Bassett where we headed east again to get closer to the updraft region and old occluded backside again. Once again, we had very interesting attempts at tornadogenesis from an old circulation… the cyclonic shear side was just rich with vorticity and it was just fascinating watching scud fragments rotating and rising to the small occluded base becoming a rapidly roating entity almost to the point of tornadogenesis. By this time, RFD was cooler as more rain cooled air was being ingested, and we began to become more disinterested with the storm… plus the fact it was moving away from us in a very poor section of road network. We bailed and headed back to Bassett where we re-evaluated the situation… we thought about chasing the big complex west of us with all sorts of mesocyclone indications on radar back over the area where we staged earlier in the afternoon (Merriman Reservoir). It was getting to be 8:30pm, however, and things were becoming more of a mess with MCS taking shape. We settled for lightning photography (Vince with video) a few miles north of Bassett on Highway 7…then called it a chase and drove through the incredible rain and extremely bright lightning on our way to Winner, SD for the night. What a fun chase for our first day!

 

[Laura Hedien]

We held in Winner SD until early afternoon then headed NW to the cell in Haaken Co. A new cell formed to the SE of that one and looked good for awhile. They just weren't moving into the atmosphere we needed them to with their southerly track.
We had some nice cloud formations- shelf cloud attached but that was about it for yesterday.
We'll be heading to Canada for Sat. Looks really good in Saskatchewan. LOL.. I'm serious.
Laura

 

[Ed Boik]

front porch lightning chase

I sat on my friends front porch and watched the most impressive lightning display of the year. Peoria, IL was centered on the apex of a bow echo that moved through around 10PM. 50mph winds-- couple gusts to close to 55. No hail.

It was nice to hear nearly constant thunder for 25-30 minutes however.

 

[Daniel Christianson]

Started early south of sioux city, and worked my way north a bit and caught w.e was left from that storm in Southeast SD. I then traveled west towards Basset NE, after being north of Oneil NE, i hate when there are no road options! so minimum maitience roads or not, and if you want to even call them a road, tracks going through fields. I sat north of Oneil NE, as i saw the supercell approach, if i stayed where i was at i prb could of got some better shots as the sun set for structre wise. It was tornado warned so i wanted to catch up to it, i got into Basset NE, and could see a wall cloud, now given i was a little late , what funnels i did see werent much i dont know if the storm went to produce anymore or not. I let that storm go as another was coming in from the West, sat an watched the line come in and then called it quits because of it being late and having to work the next day.

 

[Chris White]

Blue Earth County, MN

Another after work event. Grabed my gear afterwork attempting to cross the river before metro traffic came to a halt I set my sites for an intercept of a cell in Blue Earth, full report Here.