7/14/2010 REPORTS: MN/WI/KS

[Skip Talbot]

I was rudely (or pleasantly) awoken at 5:30 this morning while sleeping in my van 50 se of Fargo to a tornado warning, and so my chase began. The storm looked pretty elevated and had a big whale's mouth. There was a big scud look-a-like that I'm sure would have been called in if it wasn't. It got gobbled up by a squall line, which I punched and got some 1 inch hail on before I made my way down to Minneapolis.

Then disaster struck! All of the liquid drained out of my power steering pump. I almost called the chase off, but then I decided that power steering is more of an optional accessory, and so I continued on! I meandered down to the Hastings, MN area when a cell went up south of Minneapolis. I look like it was going to get interference from the stuff to the south and it eventually did, put it managed to produce just before hand.

Got a nice little tornado just west of Randolph, MN at about 2:30 pm. I was coming in from the north and shooting through a lot of rain so my stills are a little fudged and I was late getting the video on. I might have a second tornado as there was what appeared to be a funnel and a debris cloud underneath earlier on, I'll have to go back and review my pics and footage. I cross the damage path on the tornado pictured below and only saw some minor tree damage. My first July tornado!

 

[David Drufke]

Two tornadoes north and northeast of Northfield, MN, looking south.

2:24pm

2:35pm

Both were confirmed on the ground by another chaser.

 

[ngjere]

Skip, I got about 7 to 10 seconds of Video on that tube. I was east of it trying to navigate the traffic on 52 and position myself. Finally had to bail south when I realized something was winding up right over my head.

 

[edward oneal]

7/14/10 KS

This report is from Kansas, chased storms from Scott to Finney Co. Storms here had a lot of straight line winds, plus 70 mph in places. A semi was blown of off US 83 just North of my location when I took these pictures

 

[Chris Allington]

Was on the same storm as Skip, had decent structure for a bit when it first initiated West of I-35 and thought the show might be over when the junk started going up south of it. Decided to follow it a little longer...

Here are a couple more:

Shelf on the way home at Stuart, IA:

Crazy sunset:

 

[JThumberger]

Not a bad day at all for me. I've got a few pics of the funnel before the tornado, but they are pretty crummy for some reason. Video was taken 2 miles north of Northfield, MN at around 2:44pm:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkeuIqcEzig

 

[Adam Lucio]

Ah summer setups, what a pain in the arse they are

Full account is below, missed the tornado, saw a weird fognado type thing. Got into some wind and hail but otherwise the day did not live up to expectations. Oh well, its July and thats how things work this time of year.

http://aerostorms.com/071410.php

Ill say this though, that was some of the grossest air Ive ever felt. I hung my arm out to take a picture and it instantly turned into a sponge.

 

[Rob H]

One of these days, I'll have a good chase in my home state!

What a waste of all that amazing CAPE. We also thought the cells south of Northfield would be better and missed out on the only real play of the day. We chased some more linear junk out east hoping that the winds were backed more on the other side of the warm front. Found a few cells out near Rochester with some amazing rotation and what looked to be a funnel forming directly over our heads for about 30 seconds. Chased the cells that went up around Red Wing, and then went out to Menomonee, WI in desperation before realizing that they just weren't going to do it.

The Rochester cells left some cool little anticyclonic gustnadoes in their wake (pic 1), and the Menomonee cell (pic 2) would have had some beautiful lightning I'm sure if we stuck around - but we were ready to call it a day.

 

[Chris Gullikson]

Chased SE MN with Doug Raflik and Scott Weberpal.
Big differences between surface wind fields between NAM and RUC with NAM showing backed surface winds in SE MN after 18z while RUC showed veering. Based on current obs mid-day with south winds being maintained east of I-35, chose to head into southern MN towards Rochester.
Scott was really liking Eau Claire area based on HRRR model showing lone sup and nearly easterly winds in wake of morning convection. I also liked that area but thought southern MN provided better chase terrain, much higher CAPE and with a strong cap...a tail-end tornadic storm seemed realistic if surface remained southerly.

We waffled in La Crosse, I decided late to go into MN and were late getting to the briefly tornadic storm as others observed. Made a loop around Rochester then headed back east on the interstate with hopes that new development south of initial activity would become batter organized.

We were east of La Crosse by 15 miles or so with an area of interest to our northeast when I could swear I saw a funnel. I figured it was tricks of the light but soon funnel reports started to come in. The storm never really got organized despite the CAPE and shear present and it was obvious that outflow was dominating. Took 21 to Tomah while storm became tornado warned, we were stuck up in the core and did not get a look at the base while it was briefly interesting.

Kept track on radar of the lone supercell near Osseo out ahead of the line with a strong couplet and tornado reports. I should have listened to Scott, ignored the chase terrain and stuck with the obviously better surface features.

 

[Brad Nelson]

Northfield, MN Tornadoes

I have my chase log done from the two tornadoes we intercepted near Northfield, MN yesterday, including pictures and video. Check it out here if you wish: http://eyeonthetwister.com/index.php/2010/07/0714/

 

[Stephen Shield]

Took these pictures of a storm in southeast Nebraska. Not much from this storm besides the structure.

 

[Brad Williams]

These are also from Nebraska. A below average shelf cloud with 70 mph winds. It was enough that some communities sounded the sirens.

1. West of Bennington, NE

2. West of Bennington, NE

3. However after this storm blew threw, the clouds really got cool. This shot is from Council Bluffs, IA looking across the Missouri River to Omaha, NE

 

[TaddParris]

Fun chase day for myself, kinda surprised it wasnt a bigger event considering.
July 14th should be a day you make sure you have off work in Minnesota with its score for the decade.