3/31/07 Reports WI/IA/IL/MO

[Andy Rice]

I left Madison about 1:45 and drove down to Cedar Rapids, IA and met up with what was becoming linear fairly quickly.... I road the line back to Dubuque up 151 and took a second to pickup some data in Dubuque. I noticed there were a few discrete cells to my East in the SW WI so decided I would take WI SR 11 once I cross the Mississippi River in hope to get behind something. A TOR went up for Grant county on the cell to my north and I turned north on WI SR 80 through Cuba City and managed to see a funnel cloud to my East right around Platteville Airport. At that point the rain caught up to me in full force and I spend a while rushing East on 151 trying to get back out ahead of the rain. Once I did I was able to view a lowering to my NW on 151 while I was between and Mineral Point and Dodgeville. It was a really frustrating situation because the stuff to my south (the darlington TOR warned storm) was going to just run me over if I sat around waiting for the storm to the W of Dodgeville to do anything. I road into Mt Horeb to get ahead of the S one.... but it was so dark and my house was literally 5 minutes away so I called it a night.

All and all a good quick afternoon chase for me. And I saw my first funnel cloud of the year!

Andy

EDIT: Sirens are going off at my house now.... really wierd to have stuff chase you all the way into your yard.

[Joel Wright]

Well, a bust feels much better when it happens on a Saturday and you don't have to work the next day.

Jeremy Ludin and I left the Quad Cities around 9am with an initial target of Ottumwa Iowa. As we were entering town shortly before noon, the grunge began to break up and towers quickly went up all over the place. After we grabbed some data there we quickly scooted on down state route 34 to the west towards Chariton Iowa. We noticed some small cells going up here and there, but much better looking ones could be seen to our south down towards the Missouri border.

We pulled off 34 about 5 miles east of Chariton in eastern Lucas county and waited for the quickly moving cells to approach. One stood out nicely as it approached from the south and soon went severe warned. As it approached a lowering was noted, and even showed some rotation. Unfortunately, just as this was getting going the small cell just to it's east quickly strengthened and seemed to kill it's inflow.

We soon found ourselves racing back east down 34 trying to stay with these cells as they quickly began to gel together into a line. Arg.

As we passed through the now mature line in a desperate attempt to get ahead of it, we ran into some penny sized hail near Fairfield Iowa. Soon after we were ahead of the line, but all it really provided was a nice light show in the rear view mirror as we drove just ahead of it. We were hoping for some isolated cells to pop in front of the line, but nothing ever popped. (Although later some did way up in the northwest tip of IL and southern WI).

So all in all, not a total loss I guess. No tornadoes but at least it was somewhat interesting. Man, I can't wait for later in the spring when storm motions aren't exceeding 60mph!

Here's a few photos. The first one was early in the afternoon looking at some cells firing to the north. The bottom one is the wall cloud in eastern Lucas county along route 34 about 5 miles east of Chariton around 2:20pm.

http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/5790/74881047gv8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/2786/90848077na5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[Jesse Risley]

Well, we pretty much had the same luck as Joel and company. I myself, Brandon Sullivan, Kevin Crawmer, and John Thurston trolled the rt. 34 corridor over to I-35. We moved north to Des Moines and as I type were are in the middle of nowhere between Mt. Pleasant and Burlington headed back to Macomb. We intercepted a very low top storm near Osceola. We also drove through the cell near Charitan. Brandon got a few pics, but we never saw anything that I would call spectacular. A nice learning experience and nice meeting up with a few members on the boards. I'll be looking forward to next week. :D I missed the last Palm Sunday outbreak by a few years, so I'll be looking to capture a passing palm branch next week.:eek:

[Dustin Wilcox]

For being on Tornado warned storms all day it was a pretty uneventfull. Thought for a while that our second tornado warned storm was going to be able to get it done as it displayed strong concentrated rotation for a while but the storm was down hill from there, just some weak rotation and wanabe funnels.

Nothing special just a couple pictures.
http://www.severechase.com/3-31-07.htm

[Jeremy Ludin]

Well Joel pretty much told the story in his post. Even though we didn't see any tornadoes, it was still much more "successful" than last Sunday lol. We were positioned pretty good in Charitan and did see a weak rotating wall cloud. It's nice to get the first few chases out of the way.

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h248/JeLudin/03_25_07_30.jpg

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h248/JeLudin/DPP19.jpg
http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h248/JeLudin/DPP20.jpg

[Mike Hollingshead]

Drove around all day for very little. The one severe cell seemed to have a shot at tornadoing down around Louisville NE, south of Omaha. Farted around up to Carrol IA on crap. Half way into IA a tornado warning was issued for my town....yay. OAX did a survey of damage and indicate an EF1 tornado 1/4 mile wide for a mile, 3 west of Herman NE, 10 whopping miles from my home. http://kamala.cod.edu/offs/KOAX/0704312357.nwus53.html

[fplowman]

Drove east on I 80 and headed north on some tor warned storms.. they were reporting funnels etc on NWS radio.. It wasnt there though.. I followed them up through Guthrie Center Ia, all the way to Pocahontas Ia.. Passed a car with one of them old 70's model TV antennas.. lol

I think it was Dean Cosgrove.. Sorry couldnt stop to say Hello..

Anyways.. Bustola Crapola.. Sitting at a rest area in Ia south of Des moines typing this report.. On my way home.... Anyone, anything???

:D Freddy Plowman

[afischer]

Went in circles, frontwards, backwards & sideways in central IA today, covering 9 different counties. Best part of the chase was the wonderful road network and great terrain! Caught some young but rather beefy surface-based cells northwest of Carroll around 130pm. The southern one became dominant but began to struggle... however, by 230-240pm it re-strengthened and did some fun stuff at cloud base as it interacted with the NW-to-SE oriented warmfront between the towns of Early and Storm Lake. Plenty of rotating scud and some rising motion. Easterly winds were extremely strong just north of the warm front and cloud tags began racing into the updraft from the east. Visibility in haze became very poor and the storm became messy/OFD about this time amidst surface temps in the upper 50s. Dropped back south toward the main show--the arc of pva storms pinwheeling north toward I-80. Headed for the tornado warned tail-end charlie. En route, the next cell up the line from it had very nice structure and definite supercell characteristics west of Carroll. Ducked in front of the tail-end charlie northeast of Carroll near the town of Liddendale, where I immediately observed a very nice, large funnel cloud at ~420pm. It quickly dissipated and the supercell became a pretty classical-looking HP. Caught one more funnel much later on (~6pm) with a new storm northwest of Fort Dodge, near the town of Clare.

[Brian Stertz]

Back from an exhaustive (and futile) chase covering much of NE Nebraska, and C/NC Iowa. A few wall clouds of note...was excited about LCLs south of Sioux City for a brief period but not of the cold outflows plaguing that area. Saw the very beginnings of the Herman NE warned cell. Looked like a bowhead type structure...north rotating end of an lengthy shelf cloud. Figured that was not the one to chase. Eventually caught up with the meso near Coon Rapids IA. Had one "maybe funnel" and then the ugly transition to HP structure dang it...and additional development on it's southeast flank west of FOD. Severe wx observed on this chase was pretty much zip...notta...zilch. Thanks to Jeff & Kathryn Piotrowski and Terry Schenk once again for the nowcasting. Now off to bed after oggling the ETA for Tue. event (??)...should I stay or should I go ??!! Hmmmmm....

[Mike Umscheid]

Began in Dodge City deciding to make this chase since I am spending the weekend in KC anyway, so a 3-4hr return trip home post chase would be nice. I left Dodge City around 5:00am targeting far east-central NE... I had a feeling things would go up early... but not at 11:00am!! I intercepted the first TOR warned storm of the day near Tecumseh, which revealed really organized supercellish structure right around high-noon. Unfortunately, this storm did not last with a bunch of other storms forming all around it so it was no longer discrete. The storm had a nice rotating wall cloud for a time with a classic RFD clear slot (see photos). After that... the chase was uneventful for the next roughly 6 hours as I drove my way through most of southwest and west-central Iowa it seemed... from east of Nebraska City, NE I worked my way north up to Avoca (I had a long cell internet downtime in this area using Alltel).. but regained it along I-80, when I was suckered into chasing after the TOR warned "Coon Rapids" storm. I caught up to this storm north of Coon Rapids but it was so HP with little in the way of photogeneic structure. I saw Jon Davies up here, I wonder if he saw me ;-).

Anyway, after that, I about called it a day... I was halfway between I-29 and I-35 (which should I take back to KC?)... I decided on I-35 mainly because there were more weak storms to grab my attention en-route (versus completely blowing off the day at 4pm by going west). I'm glad I did this.. as I got to between Boone and Ames, I hit the northwest-southeast line of small storms developing. Interestingly enough, one of these small storm's updraft base had quite interesting rotation beneath it... which I drove right underneath along US-30 just as I got into western portion of Ames. I got off the exit at Ames to watch this thing, but I couldn't find a place to pull off... and this seemingly rapidly rotating feature was racing north quickly. A couple minutes later, this miniature "cinammon swirl" cloud base produced a formidable funnel, which I was fortunate enough to photograph (see last picture) looking north as I'm driving along Lincoln Way in the west part of Ames. Got back to KC around 10:30pm or so... long day!

http://www.underthemeso.com/gallery2/8561-1/_DSC7938.jpg

http://www.underthemeso.com/gallery2/8565-1/_DSC7943.jpg

http://www.underthemeso.com/gallery2/8568-1/_DSC7946.jpg

Mike U

[Bill Doms]

Blah...nothing great here either after driving the usual circle in IA. Still was better than sitting at home watching it rain. Chase pics here: http://www.mnwxchaser.com/07mar31.html

http://mnwxchaser.com/070331/070331008.jpg

[Kevin Crawmer]

I chased with Jesse Risely and the crew. We had the same luck as most. We got on a storm 50-60 miles south of Des Moines and chased it for quite a while. It was the most isolated/promising of the afternoon, but once it got its act together it quickly fizzled out. It then spread out and became linear. The last picture here shows how the wall cloud was wrapping around itself a bit giving us hope, but it was over in a matter of minutes.

**Pardon the poor quality of the photos as they were taken through a window while in pursuit.

[Jayson Prentice]

I wasn't too impressed with anything when I got off work around 3 PM, so I held off in heading out for a while. Ended up going for a nice joyride as some small cells were heading up near Ames, IA. Made for a nice little ride watching some updrafts every once in a while, some small rotation and possibly a weak funnel right before rain took over and it fell apart.

Umscheid, I had to of drove right past you when you saw that funnel near Ames. Too bad I missed ya...

March 31 Chase Account Gallery (http://www.stormcenterusa.com/iowachaser/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=2517)

[John Farley]

Once I have a full report done I will post a link, but thought I would put up a brief summary and a few pics now while it is timely. (EDIT: the full report can be now seen at http://www.johnefarley.com/chase33107.htm.) I would not consider the day a bust, as I saw several severe storms, but it was not what I was hoping for. Initiation was earlier than I had expected or hoped, and due to this and the strong forcing, the storms went linear much more quickly than I had hoped. Basically I intercepted the storms a little before 2 p.m. near Memphis, MO, then worked east along US 136 to just west of Macomb, IL, moving ahead to catch each new line segment as they surged north at 50-55 mph - seemed like new segments would form just SE of the existing ones and race north. Then I went south and east on the backroads from there to Industry, then south to Rushville, where I ended around 7 p.m.

I did see a fairly impressive shelf cloud on a storm around Hancock and Carthage, IL:

http://www.johnefarley.com/chase33107-3.jpg

Best storm was in western Schuyler Co, IL:

http://www.johnefarley.com/chase33107-6.jpg

This storm started out discrete and merged into the line at the tail end of a line segment, with a distinct break in the line. It had a nice lowered area for a while - possible wall cloud - but by the time it got close enough for a really good view, it was clearly going outflow dominant, as all the storms were quick to do.

Got a nice sunset at Beardstown:

http://www.johnefarley.com/chase33107-8.jpg

More pics:

Lowered areas near Granger, MO:

http://www.johnefarley.com/chase33107-1.jpg
http://www.johnefarley.com/chase33107-2.jpg

East of Carthage, IL, as the line went SVR-warned:

http://www.johnefarley.com/chase33107-4.jpg

Hard updraft tower forms to SSW, same storm as the Schuyler Co., IL storm, but in Adams Co. then:

http://www.johnefarley.com/chase33107-5.jpg

Looking north from just S of Rushville, IL, as a new line segment goes SVR-warned:

http://www.johnefarley.com/chase33107-7.jpg

Another sunset shot from Beardstown, IL, showing tail-end updraft illuminated by the setting sun:

http://www.johnefarley.com/chase33107-9.jpg

This was my first chase that included 3 states while in active chase mode. OK, it was only a couple miles in Iowa through Keokuk, but it counts - a new line segment was surging through the west side of Keokuk as I came through, and the shelf cloud pic above was taken shortly later just a little into IL.

Full report with more pictures, radar images, and LSRs at:

http://www.johnefarley.com/chase33107.htm

[Michael O'Keeffe]

Chased a pretty storm in SC Iowa along I35. The storm had beautiful structure and some strong rotation from time to time. I was sure it was going to produce a few times, but failed to do so. Still a fun little chase! Also met Dick McGowan. Will post a few photos later.

[Ryan Pfannkuch]

very similar story to others...stubbornly sat along I-80 near Atlantic, IA for nearly 2 hours intentionally ignoring all of the initial development in eastern NE and far southwest IA. I was intent on sticking close to my 4-county target area (Audubon, Guthrie, Carroll, Greene) as I figured that eventually an arc of more isolated cells along the actual surface front/dryline extending from the mess southeast of Omaha would eventually move into my area. I was also ignoring the stuff going on north of I-80...as I was intent on "riding the last wave" northward. Sure enough, after plenty of waiting, this arc of storms formed...

The first TOR warned storm in eastern Guthrie Co. caught me off guard as it was a part of the "northern development" that I was ignoring. I did however start blasting east on I-80 at this time...and ended up in perfect position to intercept the second TOR warned storm as it crossed I-80 just west of Adair. In short, I followed this storm north for 45 miles on county highways from Adair northward through Coon Rapids, playing leap-frog with some other Nebraska chasers (not sure who), before finally letting it go north of Ralston. This storm showed a nice lowering at times, and maybe a little nub funnel every now and then, but nothing more.

I am a little surprised and a little perplexed with the lack of tornadoes on these storms in western IA, although I do speculate that the widespread initial "northern development" acted to hinder/cool down the thermodynamic environment for the last wave of isolated cells.

At any rate, at least logistically the chase was pretty satisfying, with 3 of my 4 targeted counties going under TOR warnings at some point. Just wasn't quite the right mix of ingredients today...

[Scott Olson]

Tageted Onawa, IA. Upon seeing the storms firing early than expected in SE Nebraska, I spent a little indecisive time re-looking over the data and deciding what to do. During this time I chased some weak cells nearby and then decided to bolt south. As I was heading south I noticed a cell had formed just north of the front and could be intercepted pretty easily near Blair. It didn’t look too strong but the cells that were firing to the east were looking linear and the velocity fields looked unimpressive, the stuff to the SW was somewhat decent but appeared to be on a weakening trend, so I went with the somewhat isolated storm. Six miles west of Blair I intercepted the storm, it had a FFD boundary and some nice CG lightning with a very stepped appearance to it. A small funnel like feature was present right before but seemed pretty inane. RFD started to cut in during this time and as cluster came in from the south I decided to head north and try and keep up with it. It was during this time that I started to notice subtle rotation on the radar and kept taking pictures. Despite my north driving efforts the rain started to come down but I managed to make a funnel cloud out prior. Several minutes later I could see a little better but another cell had gotten between myself and the tornadic cell, however the RFD cut was easily visible and I could see the lowering before being blocked by a small area of heavy rain. After 20 minutes in the rain I managed to get out and to my east I noticed a funnel dip down about a 1/3 of the way to the ground and then promptly go back up.

http://axisofnature.com/2007/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/DSC02495.JPG

http://axisofnature.com/2007/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/108.jpg

http://axisofnature.com/2007/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/1101.jpg

http://axisofnature.com/2007/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/113.jpg

More at http://axisofnature.com/2007/

[cdcollura]

Good day everyone,

I was also out and about working the storms in the Des Moines, Iowa area area and managed to see some large hail, storm structure, and strong winds. The chase log itself is below followed by some pictures ...

Full chase log is here: http://www.sky-chaser.com/mwcl2007.htm#MAR31

March 31, 2007 was a chase day with severe thunderstorms intercepted in central Iowa near Des Moines near the Interstate 35 corridor. The chase began in the late-afternoon of March 30 leaving Dayton, Ohio and spending the night in Chicago, Illinois. The primary target was central Iowa and that area was targeted early on March 31. Left Chicago and headed toward Interstate 80 and crossed into Iowa by noon. Checked data and found the best possibility of severe weather near Des Moines. A warm front was draped south of the target area, with increasing moisture advection coming in from the south under an upper-level low approaching from the west. The problem with this type of setup was somewhat limited moisture return and, more importantly, having south-southwest winds aloft over southerly surface winds (not much directional shear).

The warm front intersected the cold front / dry punch to the west of the target area, creating somewhat of a "triple point" in west-central Iowa. Temperatures in this area were not very warm, and reached the upper 60's by the afternoon, yielding a surface CAPE of about 1,000 at best. Helicities were also highest in this region, about 150-200, enough for low-topped supercells with the differential vorticity and cold air aloft. Upper winds were strong, with at least 50 Knots of uni-directional bulk shear to 6 km (500 M and the exit region of an H3 jet stream moving in farther up ahead of a negative tilt ahead of the upper trough / low. Storm motion was to be very fast and with unidirectional shear, a plan for hail and severe winds were the agenda for chasing. At SPC, a slight was issued for the 16:30z outlook, with a rather high 10% tornado probability, 25% hail, and 30% damaging wind. A mesoscale discussion (MD) and subsequent tornado watch went up for the same target area.

The trip to the target area continued into Des Moines along I-80. Convection was first encountered about 5-10 miles east of Des Moines. A severe thunderstorm was intercepted in this area, and was part of a multicell line of strong and severe thunderstorms. These storms were intercepted at about 3:30 PM and allowed to move off very quickly to the northeast. Back west, some more storms developed closer to the location of the upper level cold core dry punch. One storm west of Des Moines was highly sheared and briefly LP supercell in nature. The dry punch quickly undercut this region by about 6:30 PM. No tornadoes were observed this day, but some small funnels were noted. The chase finished with a drive pretty much back east on I-80 then into Illinois where the nigh was spent again in Chicago. The drive back to Datyton, Ohio was done the following day. Total mileage was about 792 miles.

Mar 31, 3:30 PM - Penetration of a severe thunderstorm in Polk County, Iowa just north of Interstate 80 and near Altoona along State Road 945. The storm was pert of a multi-cell cluster of severe thunderstorms and contained lightning, torrential rains, winds near or exceeding 60-MPH, and hail up to nickel sized. Another small storm developed to the west of this area behind the line and had some LP supercell characteristics on the west side of Des Moines, Iowa. The storms were caused by a low pressure trough, surface heating, boundary interactions, and a strong upper-level low pressure area. A 2007 Ford Focus was used to chase the storms. Documentation was still digital photos and HD video. A tornado watch was also valid for this area until 7 PM EDT. Total mileage logged is 792.4 miles.

http://www.sky-chaser.com/image/mwcl2007/m8init1.jpg

Above - Storms going up (low topped) east of Des Moines, Iowa looking west along I-80.

http://www.sky-chaser.com/image/mwcl2007/m8minlp1.jpg

Interesting cell goes up just west of town. Note the small hail shaft to the left.

http://www.sky-chaser.com/image/mwcl2007/m8dpva.jpg

Interesting mammatus or mammatus-like clouds, most likely a result of intense DVA (Differential Vort Advection) east of Des Moines.

http://www.sky-chaser.com/image/mwcl2007/m8rbow.jpg

Double rain-bow ends the day in far eastern Iowa along I-80.