7/17/06 DISC: IA

[Ryan Pfannkuch]

This afternoon NWS DMX issued a delayed LSR of a brief tornado near Tama (60 miles NE of Des Moines) yesterday captured on a KCCI-TV Schoolnet webcam. After a brief search on the Schoolnet image archive I found the evidence. The image below shows the Tama webcam at exactly 451pm. The archive page where you can run loops and all that is at
http://www.schoolnet8.com/camera/

Amazing...I've never seen an LSR based on a webcam image. As luck would have it, this event happened only 50 miles from my apartment but I was stuck at work all day. Anyway, just thought I would share...

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

I wonder if this tornado happened before or after the tornado warning came out. I had a good view of the base the second the tornado warning popped up on xm. XM seems to put those warnings out bring dang fast. It seems I've seen them pop up before hearing the tone on anything. I almost went north towards Tama but decided it was going to slide east of there so I'd have to go over east a bit to the road that goes up between Haven and Chelsea. As I was going north towards Chelsea the warning came out. There are some hills in that area and perhaps I just missed it. I'm guessing what is more likely is it happened before I got to go north, possibly before the tornado warning came out on xm. Not that it matters since I certainly missed that.

I now see why it was so windy in and east/se of Marengo when I was in it there.

3 HR Radar Lopp Here

Right on and just east of Marengo is when it gets that hook and turns right for a bit. This is just north of I-80 when it is there. Just west of the county line west of IOW(Iowa City). It seems like that energy from the north hit it right then and caused that. You can see the first storm to the north get a hook for a bit then that moves south and makes the other briefly hook. I only think that because it seems timed right as it moves through that area of rain.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Looking at video it looks like the tornado warning popped up on xm between 5:00 and 5:05...after the tornado. I would have been going east looking north at it when it happened. Wondering when the warning came out. The tornado may have happened before there was any warning on the storm. I should have caught that....sigh.