7/16/07 REPORTS: IA

[Brandon Sullivan]

Well not too bad of a day overall.. Most exciting thing I got to see was a wall cloud.. Caught this one near Kesosaqua.. Storm had visual rotation for a very long time, but never really organized into a well defined wall cloud until my photos... Still cant believe someone had 4.5 inch hail.. WOW!!!

 

[Craig Maire II]

I too was on the storm just south of Charles City that Josh was on and shot video of a nice hailstorm in Clarksville Iowa, (hail was approximately 1.00 inches in diameter) and then followed the storm into Blackhawk County, stayed out of the core (first time for everything) but did pickup some hail that had just fallen that was at least 4 inches in diameter! (near Finchford Iowa. Also got pics and video of the bow echoe that came through Blackhawk later and it was awsome! Very nice shelf cloud and the winds were gusting to at least 65 mph! (tree limbs were being ripped from the trees and flying across the road!) Had some damage in my home town of Washburn, large tree limbs came down taking down power lines etc. and one very large limb actually came through the roof of my friends house! I guess 2007 isn't over yet!

P.S. if anyone wants to see a pic of the hail that feel in and near Finchford I have one posted on my website located at http://www.easterniowastormchaser.com it's located on the front page under the Greensburg Kansas tornado. I like to have one HAIL of a good time but today was rediculous! LOL

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Targeted the day as perfect as I ever have, but was off by about 2 hours with initation so I was behind right away. Targeted Iowa City, which was where the main supercell initiated in eastern Iowa. Wound up in traffic, and then got pulled over by an Iowa state trooper, then had to deal with the Iowa river. FINALLY intercepted the supercell near Washington where it had a gorgeous striated and beefy updraft base with a tightly wrapped wall cloud on the front flank... yay HP's. The wall cloud snuck up on me once I emerged from the precip core so I was only about a half mile away. This was the only time during the chase that I thought a tornado might be possible.

That storm became outflow dominant, just as a storm on it's western flank took off and became supercellular near Fairfield. This one wasn't as good structurally, but still had a nice round base. However, no wall cloud ever really organized under it. Once it looked like it lost it's tornadic potential, I decided I wanted to sample the core. Was very disappointed as radar was indicating 3.50" hail both times I went in, but came back with nothing more than the 0.75" that I reported the the NWS.

Another supercell briefly organized further south approaching Keosoqua which had a low level couplet for one scan, and then fell apart. This storm had a lot of low level grunge (I think that's what you have Brandon... unless you're positive you saw rotation in it, because I saw no rotation during my time on the storm since they had become outflow dominant).

At this point the only really intense storms left were with the bow echo to the north. So, since I had to go north to get back to Interstate 80 anyway I headed up that way keeping an eye on the bow, which lost it's punch once I reached the interstate so I just continued on back to Illinois.

I'll post some video clips and stills tomorrow when I'm more awake. Was a fun little chase I suppose for July. I was pleased to see my target verify... but apparently need to work on my timing. I left what I thought as early... but for some reason right away I felt like I was way behind, and it turned out I was. Didn't look like I missed a ton though anyway.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Uploaded a little video from yesterday since I likely won't feel like doing video captures or writing up a log for a couple days, and by then it won't even matter. Not that there is a whole lot to see anyway... I mean, it was Iowa.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=G-4EE0v1GQI

Actually, was probably my best Iowa chase.

Which isn't saying much.

No really, it was a decent chase.

 

[Josh Richardson]

Here is the short version of our chase yesterday, Kenny and I started heading out towards the Waterloo area and after sitting in Bremer Co. had made the decision to commit to a decent tower shooting up near Floyd IA back in Floyd Co. This tower shot up extremely fast and didnt hardly move for a while as the storm continued to strengthen but was fairly high-based. As this storm continued SSE at a pace of around 15 mph it continued to become more surface based while tops also growed to near 60,000ft.

Again, the short version is the storm wrapped pretty nice as it moved SE towards the Waterloo area as it neared the more enhanced 0-1 km SRH noted across eastern central IA. Low level rotation was pretty weak throughout most of the storms life but we did encounter very large hail near New Hartford with up to baseball sized there and then again down by Hudson with this time calling in softball sized hail. The van definitely took some big hits and we somehow managed to not lose our windows.

All in all pretty enjoyable chase as the road networks stayed in our favor and we stayed directly under the SW edge of the storm throughout its life until it became more shelfy SW of Waterloo.

Here are just a few pics, unfortunately I couldnt get pics of the hail. We should have that on the dash cam so I will add that later on...

 

[Dan Melby]

I also witnessed the hail dumping storm from near charles city to waterloo. Watched the storm from birth as I was mooching wifi at the super 8 in mason city. The storm exploded very quickly and just crept south east which made it a fun chase. Along the highway near finchford hail littered the ground ranging from golfball to baseball. Here are a few pics of the storm. (I Appologize for the poor resolution) Keep in mind that I decided to take a few pics of the hail after it had been on the ground for about 10 mins in very warm weather and the stone on the left was still over 3"!!