8/8/07 REPORTS: IL/IA/MN/IN/OH/MO/KS/NE

[Mike Hollingshead]

Well I'm not sure I should be happy or not since I can no longer think good storms aren't possible with -2c to -3c at 500mb. Cut down to Nebraska City then to Auburn. There a cell getting going. Went east, that cell went linear at lightspeed. As I went east I noticed an isolated tower straight ahead. This got my attention more and more. I never did get radar again at this point as things were just constantly keeping you way to busy.

Line got NASTY and was hauling. I stayed ahead of it and soon planned to intercept that isolated cell. That cell turned into a complete beast as I neared it east of Rockport. It was nuts, this insane line/shelf was trying to munch me and just ahead of it was this beauty. The cell soon reminded me a bit of the May 12, 2004 storm near ICT when it had that sweet meso. It wasn't that cool, but it sure looked like that is where it was headed. It had "I'm going to tornado very soon" written all over it.

I get into Tarkio, just north of the beautiful meso, with a clear vault area. Right then CGs began dotting the town like it was target practicing. One hit around a block away. The line was just about to overtake it here.

I get east a few miles and pull over and look back sw at the action. It was just merging into the big shelf, but had two inflow tails racing sw into it from the ne. Soon there was rapid rotation about 1 mile sw, to the east of Tarkio. Next thing I know, tornado snaking around. It was only condensed for about 10 seconds that I saw.

While this was happening the curling rfd from that storm was actually east of straight south of me. I needed to get the hell out of there as that rotation was screaming east at me. I left too late. The drive east was a smidge spooky as it felt like the car was about to be ripped from the highway. The chase ends a bit later after meeting up with Steve Peterson east of Marysville MO. We couldn't get ahead again. Well we drive back the same way and looked for the damage Steve saw east of Tarkio. I knew it would be close to where I parked. I see the hill I stopped at and right after that see powerpoles snapped onto the highway a half block away.

Fun times. More later. Oh yeah, Tarkio looked to have a lot of trees down and Rockport was completely dark when I got back there...also with many trees down. I can only imagine where that lead cell was going with its structure and tornado hopes before that line got it. It was simply nasty and wound up like mad.

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

It was nice to finally see a forecast verify so nicely, as soon as storms initiated I darted out the door and raced south Towards SE NE. From the get go it was apparent the darn river and time was going to be an issue as storms initiated a little farther East then I was expecting. After making my way through the mess that was the I-80 detour I found myself on HWY 75 halfway between NE City and Auburn, at this point the line was barreling down on me and I knew to see any sort of structure I would have to get ahead of it but due to the river had to drop North or South to do that. I put the pedal down and raced South towards Auburn but not before getting swallowed by the line, it got real bad when I was 5 miles N of Auburn slowing my progress, then when I turned E on hwy 136 to race out ahead of the line it got real bad, winds at least 60mph and I would say probably a lot stronger, about 5 miles E of Auburn I noticed on radar the storm ahead of the line and its nice radar presentation, and about the time I was rolling up on Brownville NE the tornado warning was issued, at this time I was only 15 miles from the storm but the blinding wind/rain and tree littered roads aided by the lines Eastward surge kept me from being able to really push it to much. After watching the line destroy what ever the supercell had going for it I decided to drop south on I-29 from Rock Port as a new Tornado Warning was up for Richardson Co. I intercepted that storm near Corning, it did not appear to be anything close to tornadic at that point, I eventually decided that Tornado chance was about all but gone (what little chance there was) and opted to let the core over take me, near Corning I once again had probably close to hurricane force gusts with very small hail. Its to bad that the line had to surge East like it did and couldn’t of got held up as it did further South all I needed was about 10 more minutes and that leading storm sure would have made for a nice chase, besides the frustration of not being able to get to the better storm in time, I had fun with the intense downdrafts, and the sky during the drive home on I-29 was pretty awesome as the the sun dropped behind a tower to the west near Lincoln while the sky overhead was filled with the anvil and some mamutus from the storms to the East.

 

[Damon Scott Hynes]

Left Omaha at 5 and blasted south on US-75 and I-29 to Rock Port. I must have commitment issues--back in the day I would have punched as far south as I needed to, even if that meant St. Joe!

This was at the Shell in Rock Port, looking south at about 6:20

Nice structure, but I really wasn't sure what I was seeing. Both OAX and EAX had this storm as SVR, but EAX changed their tune 5 mins later and called it DITOR.

While at the Shell, I see a nice shelf cloud hauling southeast, so I park across the interstate and let it punch me:

Within 20 mins that 66 sign was gone.

I heard the TOR for eastern Atchison County, and I drove into Rock Port for a half-assed attempt to intercept. It may have been some rotation, or the downburst interacting with the loess hills, but I was getting winds and tree shreds from all vectors, within the space of a few feet! Enough's enough and I scooted back west. Worst outflow/downburst/RFD I've ever been in--the walls of water seemed to me like I was driving in a whiteout blizzard.

I then entertained myself by heading down NE-67 to near Falls City, trying to get south of the Richardson County DITOR and seeing a ton of flash flooding.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

This was as I finally started to gain on the isolated cell just ahead of the line. I'm just about to Tarkio. View is southeast. I'm about to be north of this. I was wondering what I'd get for hail but really don't even recall much rain. All I remember were the CGs going mad in this area. Darn laptop reflection! This was not the greatest of shooting conditions...needing to keep moving quickly, pretty dark out around this storm and the lovely nw MO terrain(and freaking powerpoles everywhere).

Now in Tarkio looking south at it, CGs landing IN town...one around a block behind and left of this shot(ahead of me and left). It was now starting to be affected by the line. The shelf was just starting to touch the back side of it. The shelf I'd been running from forever. Sucks it had to mess up this sweet storm.

I'm now around 5 miles east of Tarkio looking southwest at the now merged storm. This was the only time I was able to stop driving since west of Brownsville NE...and I maybe had a minute here before I flew east. I wasn't expecting much now, but found the two inflow clouds racing southwest rather interesting. Soon you could see rapid rotation in there.

Then bam, tornado. It didn't last long, but was pretty cool to watch twist around. Oh, and this is actually at 10mm...making it look much much further away than it was. I'd guess the tornado was 1 mile away.

Here is a full sized crop from the above still. I actually took this with my right hand while holding the video camera in my left lol. I back out of here a smidge late as a swirling mass, behind an obvious rfd cut area, moves over me at warp speed. If you look at the full sized version you can see two poles towards the left, back on the highway. Those were snapped right behind me from this spinning whatever. I was doing around 80 east, trying to stay ahead of(out of) whatever was to come of that spinning area and was starting to wonder when exactly my car was going to be blown off the road(winds had to be near or over 80mph from the south). I 100% underestimated the forward speed on this area. I'm pretty certain the winds around me as I did this were not tornadic exactly, but were most certainly the rfd winds ahead of this rotating area, blasting hard from the south. I should be able to show how that looked at the time whenever I get some video grabs.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Here is a grab from video of the same tornado.

I found this fairly interesting while watching the video of my departure. I'm in the process of backing onto the highway, then turning right to go east. The last split second before this view is out of frame, that vorticie spins up just left of the pole. I can't remember for sure, but either that pole was snapped or it was the one to the right of it, and the next one.

 

[Dick McGowan]

Darin Brunin and I chased several cells, one which went tornado-warned, but never really looked tornadic. Lots of scud, turbulence (some of the fastest I've seen) and lots of outflow winds and rain, not much for structure, besides the shelf cloud that pushed south into Kansas City later on. We stayed out late trying to shoot lightning, what a challenge that was. Had numerous strikes within a few hundred yards, one hitting a transformer right in front of us, which was neat. Darin got some pretty good strikes, I should have known that the wide angle wasn't a good choice for lightning.

In North Kansas City:

 

[Brandon Sullivan]

Sup Near Quincy, IL

I caught a local storm. After only being SVR warned for some time, an impressive cell near kirksville Mo, really took off, becoming very supercellular. Went tornado warned so I decided to take a drive. Headed to Quincy IL, about 100 miles from me. Saw a wall cloud, impressive scud, nickel size hail, and a double rainbow. Took a few pics, but the glass messed them up. I was a liitle late to the cell, once it hit the MS river it was dead in under 40 mins. What a bummer.. Some very impressive pictures of the storm on local media outlets. This storm was warned for Tor/Baseball Size Hail/Straight Line Winds. MAN, I wish I had a better pic, looked like a classic plains LP Sup. Did anyone else chase this cell???

 

[Brian Stertz]

Ended up with 4.05" of rain overnight in Overland Park. We got the shelf cloud a good 30 mins. before the heavy rain & thunder moved in. It was a cool shelf cloud and was pretty vivid even with it being well after sunset. No severe wx though...winds got up to about 40mph and no hail.

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

I also saw the shelf and tried to get some video to show how much light was coming off of the shelf,but the video turned out pretty bad. We had some strong wind gusts for a while before the heavy rain started. We have small tree branches, lawn chairs, and leaves everywhere this morning. Also I was watching the storm in my room with the window slightly open and lightning struck so close to me I felt the lightning also charge my body. I have never been so close to a lightning strike in my life. I jumped 50 feet! Luckily I was in the house..if not I probably would have been seriously hurt or even killed y the shear force of the bolt.

 

[Dick McGowan]

We got the shelf cloud a good 30 mins. before the heavy rain & thunder moved in. It was a cool shelf cloud and was pretty vivid even with it being well after sunset.

Yeah, the precip was clear on the other side of it. We measured twice, in the warm sector, it was 94 degrees, and when the OFB went through, it would drop to 77.

Darin and I were witnessing some beautiful, extremely close cg's about an hour before dark, and attempted to do "reaction" shots, I shot this one handheld.....(It's at 10 mm in the vehicle and notice how close it is!, I had it on autofocus, so it didn't focus it in that well.) I bet we had around 25 different times during the night where bolts would hit extremely close to us.

Some more of the shelf.......

 

[edward oneal]

Chased storms near Protection KS, hail to the size of quarters and winds from 60 to 70 mph. Which is norm for Kansas this time of year. Got some pictures of the anvils as the sun was setting, very beautiful structure.http://spotted.dodgeglobe.com/pages/gallery.php?gallery=317793

 

[cstrunk]

Chased the storms in Atchison/Nodaway counties in Missouri. I left with a friend from my house after watching the Tarkio storm blow up just south of my house. We were doomed from a late start and were never able to get ahead of the storm before it was overtaken and went linear. We took highway 71 south into Maryville, MO and got munched by the line about 6-7 miles north of Maryville. Very dark and spectacular shelf cloud. We feebly tried to get east of the storm but gave up and ended up sitting a few miles west of Maryville parked on a gravel road being treated to a nice double rainbow and attempting lightning pictures. I don't really have much experience doing this and my camera isn't the greatest, but I managed to get a few interesting shots. My friend's camera is nicer and he got a few shots that were pretty neat. There was a lot of amazing anvil crawler activity, but we never got the best ones on camera.

All-in-all, I learned that it would be wise in the future to leave earlier for chases near home, and had a fun time taking pictures of lightning with my buddy.

Here are a few pics I was able to get:

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Rest of the images and the account are done now(minus putting a video file on there, that I will at some point fairly soon).

Guess that powerline is still hot!(note the spark/fire on the lower wire in the grass). This is one of the couple poles snapped behind me as I left that road.

http://www.extremeinstability.com/07-8-8.htm