8/4/07 Reports: SD/NE/IL/IN/IA

[Brandon Sullivan]

Wow. Morning/Afternoon MCS surprised me when an embedded cell got close enough to the warm front and completely exploded. A small cell, quickly turned supercellular. Got a call from another chaser, who was watching it more than me, he told me it was rotating. That storm dumped rain at a very intense rate, intersections were completely covered, and I was nearly floating in my truck. I followed the storm, and got right under the Meso Indicators, only to see a small wall cloud for a short duration. Did have some chase buddies with good size hail only about 5miles south of me. I am still fascinated over the influence of the warm front however.

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

A great chase day! We sat at the Shell in a town east of Le Mars, IA I forget the name as major towers exploded around us. We noticed the storm to our SW being the strongest and decided to chase it. The storm exhibited goof structure and even dropped a possible landspout. The storm then went insane and produced the coolest wall cloud I have EVER seen! Unfortunetly the wall cloud got rain wrapped and the day was pretty much over by then. Now spending the night in Le Mars. Thnaks to Michael Carlson for nowcasting.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Was on the Cherokee storm as well. It was ok for about 5-10 minutes. The far majority of the day sucked.

Here are a couple right before and during when it was tornado warned.

One cell finally formed the typical early HP "scoop", which leaned southeast(before the above image). It kept scooping until an area started cutting in behind it, barely viewable on the left side of the above image. This cut/push tries to come around, as the scoop becomes less shelfy with a tendancy to get pulled back west. I thought there was some tornadic hope as this was happening. Oh yeah, I wish I had a T/TD gadget of some sort right before this, just south of the scoop/storm. The dewpoint had to be pushing 90 there localy. It just would not surprise me if it was. It was certainly WELL into the 80s. This was just barely south of the scoop.

A smidge further east/later(couple minutes maybe). That rfd cut was extremely wet. It blasted on around, really not even forming a base or new updrafts with it as it did so. Usually you can see some kind of structure with the rfd cut...not this thing. It went back to crap quicker than it got this organization.

Both the above were at 10mm. It was always right on you it seemed, as it first got going on that e-w highway. I then used several county roads to zig zag with it. I wish all states had county roads like this area of IA.

Speaking of high dews..."yay" for the 0z nam showing 80+ around here Mon/Tues.

 

[Bill Doms]

Edit: more pics http://www.mnwxchaser.com/07august04.html

Not much to add. Mike pretty well summed it up as this thing looked better before the torn warning was put on it. Biggest issues were the lenses fogging up when the cams were taken out of the vehicle and a real lack of good surface inflow. It would kick up, the wall would look a little better, the surface winds would die and so would the wall. Did it 3 times. Early shots look the same as Mike's but here are a couple later from pretty close to Aurelia right before it puked.

And one of a cell over Storm Lake IA on the way back home looking south off 71 near Spencer.

 

[Kory Hartman]

Video of the same storm...
...on my site...

 

[Daniel Christianson]

Well im glad i didnt miss much, i was draped in rain of US HWY 20 for a while i heard the warning go out for Cherokee and Buena Vista Co IA, i was a little upset but i decided it was an hour till dark and i wasnt going to waste my time driving to play catch up and having the storm die and have even further to drive home. so i said ill stick with this shower near Winnebago Indian Reservation, and im glad i did after being dissappointed with 45 min of sitting in the rain i got rewarded, i was really tempted to bust the whole chase and go home but i stuck with it and it payed off , I dont know exactly where my location was at because i was pretty much jacking around on minimum maitience roads up north of Sioux City for awhile, and back into the Reservation... there are some good road options there only if it hasnt rained, because otherwise your just asking to get stuck in the middle of no where" anyways hope tommorow brings something good here's the pics.

This is the thundershower i was on"

This is what it transformed into later

and another shot looking west from Hwy 75 in Winnebago/Omaha Indian Reservation

 

[John Wetter]

I was also on the Cherokee storm. As has already been said, it looked really neat at first. Never really saw any rotation with it as had been called in, but still looked cool, then turned into a wet mess. It made a few other updraft areas near Aurelia and near Alta but they were all quite unorganized.

As I drove through Cherokee about 15 minutes before the storm, there appeared to be some disturbance happening on the street that had all the cops occupied (I drove over and down a couple blocks). I'm sure the TOR warning made their evenings even busier.

It ended up being a long drive with just a little bit of a show. The next couple days are looking more interesting.

One pic from the storm near Cherokee:

More pics here.

 

[Tony Perkins]

Finally a day in Iowa with a storm. Amy and I hung out on the north side of Spencer at a gas station with 3 trucks carrying enormous windmills blades. Apparently these are the small ones, the larger ones are 40 feet more. We headed southwest when the storms formed and picked the NE of the two storms to follow, having already been there. We gave up on it and got to the SW one west of Cherokee just as the warning was issued. The wall cloud was visible and then poof it was gone, likely obscured by rain. We headed east through town for about 2 miles, beat the train by about 15 seconds (It was crawling), and then set up to see the lapses in the video linked in the chase log below. There was a great deal of motion, though nothing very organized.

Full Chase Log