First chase of the season!! Iowa 3/22/11

Today was the first chase of the 2011 season. It was an earlier chase than usual, as a seasonably strong storm system moved through and temps were more like April or May. The high today in Omaha was 78!! This time of year chasing can be tricky because often times storm motions are very fast due to stronger storm systems that have faster upper level winds which steer the storms.
Today was no exception. The storms were forecast to move at 40-50 mph, but most of the time were moving at 50-60 mph and sometimes even 65 mph!! This can make it hard to catch up to a storm if you're behind it or to stay out of its way if you need to be safe!
I went out chasing with a buddy and we left town around 330. We immediately had a tough decision. There were storms west of Omaha moving almost due north, and there were storms in southeast Nebraska moving northeast into southwest Iowa. We decided to go to southeast Iowa. We went south on I-29 and then went east on Hwy 34 towards Red Oak. On our way there, the storms up by Omaha turned east and were now tornado warned with a confirmed tornado by Missouri Valley, Iowa! Again, with the fast storm motions there was no way to get back up that way even though we were only about 40 miles away.
We continued on to Red Oak just barely staying in front of our initial storm. The storm was only severe warned for large hail. We decided at that point to head back north towards Atlantic, Iowa to get closer to the warm front where there should be a better chance for a tornado. While driving north we were overtaken by the original storm, and it was now tornado warned! The storm didn't look that great though for a tornado and we were hit by some quarter to possibly a little larger sized hail. We made it back to I-80 and at this point thought we could make it back to the tornado warned storm that was heading towards Harlan. It was weakening though, so in an effort to still get a tornado and with enough daylight left we headed east on I-80 towards more storms coming up from the south. One of the storms was massive and went through Greenfield with a report of a rain wrapped tornado. Just exactly what we didn't want. A tornado you couldn't see and moving at 50-60 mph! We positioned ourselves south of the storm on Hwy 92 and tried catching up with it as we continued east, but never did. We finally ended up in Winterset, Iowa where we decided to fill up and get something to eat. One more last storm moved over us while we were there with tons of marble sized hail. The back edge of the storm looked pretty interesting so we went out east of town to look at it. The motions in the clouds were absolutely intense! It was almost enough to make you motion sick with the way clouds were spinning and rising and falling. Nothing came close to producing a tornado though. While we were sitting there, we hadn't noticed an intense line of storms that were forming along the cold front that was moving in from the west. These storms were producing large hail and for a while went tornado warned as well, but again didn't look real great tornado wise. We went north on Hwy 169 to let the storms come over us. Using my radar we tried to position ourselves in the main hail core which the radar was showing to be up to 2.5" in diameter!! While driving into position, I saw something I've never really seen before. Often times when storms produce really big hail, there aren't as many stones falling to the ground. So you can be driving and not actually be getting hit by hail despite seeing these large chunks of ice falling all around you. This is what was happening to us as we were driving. We finally ended up getting hit by a couple of the large stones, that I'm sure left some more dents! Lastly, as we continued north we ran into some damage to a farmstead right along the highway. There was a report of a tornado hitting the house here. We stopped and took some pics of damage to the buildings and telephone poles in the area, before heading home. Overall, it was a fun trip with lots of activity. We were in hail several different times and experienced hail golf ball sized and even a bit larger. We didn't see any tornadoes, but it was a tough day to chase.

Here are some pics below. I didn't end up with very many because we were constantly on the move and never had time to stop and take pics. These are from the last line of storms that we waited to overtake us north of Winterset, and then some of the damage to the farm.