SE Nebraska/SW Iowa and lightning pics 5/31/09

This chase was pretty uneventful. I knew though before leaving that there probably wasn't going to be much so it wasn't a surprise. Morning clouds finally gave away to warm late spring sun and temps rose up into the 80's. However moisture was severely lacking as dewpoints in the morning started out in the upper 30s. they did a nice job of recovering but were still only in the lower to mid 50's by late afternoon. This really stunk because the winds were very favorable for rotating storms, but unfortunately the cloud bases were too high. There was even alot of doubt on whether storms would be able to fire through the warm mid levels of the atmosphere. I was at home, deciding to cancel chasing for the day when I noticed some cells popping south of lincoln. i watched them for a while before they suddenly grew pretty rapidly. i happened to look at my back patio and i could see a huge tower to my south. at this point it had been 3 weeks since i had been able to chase so i decided to go knowing this wouldn't be a very long chase. i headed south down I-29 and ran into the first major cell. i think i was just ahead of the main hail core though so i only experienced rain. the storm visually was pretty impressive especially from afar, but as i drove through it and seemed pretty unorganized and high based. i stopped just south of the cell, and pulled over to take some pics. the storm was looking better here from the south again. i took some pics of the precip shaft to my north and also a pretty good view of the smooth underside of the storm where the updraft was. i went east into iowa eventually ending up as far east and south as a town called riverton, ia in southwest iowa. it was getting close to sunset so i decided to start the hour drive home. once i got home, i was watching the news when the weather showed a line of storms that i believe were along the warm front that had just developed in the last 20 minutes. these storms were about 25-30 miles south of omaha on a west to east line. i looked at the back again and i could see the towers with the lightning flashing in them being also illuminated by the moon. i wasn't able to get any pics right away but went out and got some pics right before the moon was taken over by the growing storms. my battery ran out after about 15 minutes, so i had to quit for a while. the storms died down shortly after so i thought i was done for the evening. after about 45 minutes though, i looked out and noticed more lightning. i checked the radar once again and now a new line of storms were lined up east to west just south of omaha by about 10 miles this time. these were much closer so the lightning was better. i took pictures off and on for about 45 minutes. right before my battery was getting low again, the lightning really got intense. unfortunately i kept missing the big bolts expcept for the last pic i posted. i really love taking lightning pics(as you can probably see)!!

cell southeast of lincoln taken from near my house



getting closer driving down I-29

pretty impressive looking storm, notice the hail shaft under the storm

rainbow showed up right as i was entering the edge of the storm and the sun was still out

smooth yet ominous looking underside of the storm

back side of the storm with the rain falling in the background

another pic of the underside of the updraft

rain shadows

again

pic of storm later furhter east into iowa

again

pics of storm towers with moonlight in background. i love how "bright" it look like outside, even though its 11 at night!

again

lightning in the background with some more cumulus clouds developing







the moon partially came out again so i took some more cool pics!

this was one of my favorites!









the storm got more of a bluish color to it as it moved a little closer

just missed a big bolt






the last big bolt i could get before my camera died!

Kirksville, MO tornadoes 5/13/09

Well after this chase, I wanna say that I have seen my first tornado!! BUT, it wasn't the "picture" i had imagined in my head of a nice big tornado out in an open flat field with clear visibility all around it! In the end I barely missed seeing a tornado clearly, and then a tornado barely missed me!!
Originally, I wasn't going to go out chasing this day because at first the risk and outlook area was going to be for mainly high winds and the area was going to be eastern missour and iowa and rapidly moving away. but the forecast changed eventually leading to a moderate risk issued for most of northern Missouri and Illinois all the way back into Oklahoma. i finally decided that even though this would be a longer chase, it could be very rewarding so i decided to go for it. at one point i almost was going to go south into southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma, but that was getting some 5-6 hours away, and the northern Missouri target was about 4 hours away. i left omaha around 10 am and arrived at my initial target of Macon, Mo along highway 36 in northern missouri. i ate some food at a horrible hardee's and waited around town for a couple of hours for initiation to start. while waiting in a parking lot, i was on stormtrack and saw a message from another chaser that was waiting in macon as well and he was thinking about going north to kirksville area. i replied to tell him i was in town as well, but thought i would wait here. MISTAKE!! around 415-430 i believe, the first tornado warning suddenly came out for a cell about 20 miles west of kirksville. i wasn't going to go after this storm bc it didn't look that great on radar at first, but i looked around though and there was nothing else so i decided to head north. kirksville was only 30 miles away and i had a nice straight highway that i could take to get there. as i headed north several things started happening rapidly. 1)it became dark very fast, and suddenly i had a great view of the huge towers exploding. 2)a second cell to the southwest became tornado warned. i almost broke off my route and headed towards that cell but chose to keep going north. 3)the tornado warnings coming out west of kirksville were now for a tornado on the ground! 4)finally there was a cell that was developing south of kirksville that was beginning to already form a wall cloud. i kept watching the wall cloud form to my west and about 5 miles south of kirksville, i started to run into rain and hail. i made a last minute decision to stop and get some video and a better view of the wall cloud even though there was still a tornado on the ground about 6 miles west of kirksville now. i really kind of regret that now! i took a road that was only 2 miles south of kirksville and headed west. i eventually came to the top of a ridge and turned into a gas station parking lot and took a couple of minutes of video of the wall cloud. i left after the wall cloud began to look a little less ominous and I headed into kirksville. i had to drive through most of town to get to the highway 6 that i wanted to take west out of town. when i turned onto the highway there was a bridge or viaduct or something and here there were a bunch of chasers and other vehicles. i immediately pulled over and got out just in time to see the tornado becoming totally rain wrapped!! i just missed having a perfect shot of the tornado!! i recorded about 30 seconds of video before i could see the rfd coming rapidly towards me. everyone began to get in their cars and leave, so i did a u-turn and left as well. i headed back south through town looking for a good road that would take me east out of town where i could parallel the storm as it moved east. my gps showed a road, highway 11, that would lead me out of town. i remember seeing a road closed ahead sign after i turned onto the highway, but i figured there would be a detour. as i headed east i had a good view of the storm to my north. it was very impressive with all kinds of intense motion in the clouds. i stopped briefly for a better view and was thinking the tornado was still a ways back bc it had been moving so slowly prior to reaching kirksville. after 5-6 miles or so, the highway turned to the north which led me right into the storm. this was only a brief 1-2 mile jog before the road turned back to the east though. as i turned to the north, rain began to fall pretty heavily, but there was no real wind or even hail. i continued on down the highway for a couple of more miles before, sure enough i ran into the road closed sign and there was no detour. i had to turn around! the rain had already pretty much stopped and soon after a while the sky began to lighten up. after a couple of miles of driving back west though i began to notice debris on the road like leaves and small branches. soon i noticed leaves falling from the sky despite there being no trees real close to the road and there was no noticeable wind. a little bit further i started to notice metal and insulation stuck in the fence on the side of road, and then i came upon a power pole broke over the road and the fencing from one side of the road blown across the road. THE TORNADO HAD JUST CROSSED THE ROAD RIGHT BEHIND ME!! i was totally amazed and then kind of freaked out. i have since gone back and watched my video to see how long it took me to drive through this spot and then return when i had to turn around, and it was only 4 minutes and 30 seconds which means the tornado missed me by 2 minutes at the most!! there was already one car stopped at the point where the fence was down, and soon 3 other cars that were a group of storm chasers came by as well. i looked out to my right and out in the field you could see the ground where the tornado had crossed. the ground was scoured with circular marks. i looked back towards the direction of the storm and there was a very noticeable feature that at first thought was just a hail shaft, so i didn't take much video and no still pictures. but after reviewing my video and taking a closer look, i'm 99% sure that this was the rain wrapped tornado. it would have had to be it, since it had just crossed the road here and was now several miles away. about this same time there was a report of a large tornado on the ground about 10 miles east of kirksville which would have put it in the same area as where i was seeing the tornado. after a bit i headed back down the highway into kirksville. there were already reports of the tornado ripping through north kirksville with lots of reports of damage and possible injuries. eventually it was found that 3 people died. i thought about going to try and get some good damage pics and video, but thought that would just be crazy to try and get up to that part of town. so i made one last effort to catch back up with the storm on highway 6 east, but gave up after driving through tree lined roads and experiencing no cell phone coverage and therefore i had no internet. i turned back around and started the 4 hour trip home. what a day!!

link to a picture that was sent to me of the tornado that crossed the highway right behind me as it was crossing the road. notice the white house. the fence that we had to stop for was blown across the road right by that house!
http://tornadolive.com/closetorns.jpg

here are some good links to various pics and video and stories:
the forum that i go on all the time for my storm chasing. alot of good pics and stories to look through from this day
http://stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20699

links to pictures from kirksville newspaper:
http://www.kirksvilledailyexpress.com/news/x342398818/Photos-from-Wednesdays-Tornadoes?popular=true

crazy youtube video of a chaser that almost gets caught in the tornado. if you search on youtube for kirksville tornado, you'll find a whole bunch more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCwADHa0crk&feature=related
others:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdG7C2A9DyE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV02MKZE1kw

damage surveys:
http://test.crh.noaa.gov/eax/?n=severewx-20090513


towers exploding as i head north towards kirksville

another shot of the anvil of the storms

shot of ominous wallcloud 2 miles south of kirksville

wall cloud again

video grab of tornado becoming rain wrapped. tornado is in the "stuff" to the left

picture taken by another storm chaser that came upon me stopped in the road due to debris. that's me getting out of the malibu in the picture!!

video grabs of the tornado from the back after the tornado had crossed hwy 11 right behind me!

shot of the huge cumulus clouds

one more storm on my way back down to macon and hwy 36 on my way home

more pics of the storms to the north of macon on my way home

again

one more!

west central Iowa 4/24/09

i had another pretty successful chase on this one, especially for what i was expecting. april 24th was to be the first of at least 3 possible severe weather episodes across the plains. unfortunately for the first day, the moisture wasn't quite there yet, and the wind field across the northern plains was focused well behind the slowly southward advancing cold front. when i woke up in the morning the front was already within 60 or so miles northwest of omaha. i figured it would be through omaha alot earlier, but it was very slow to drop south. this allowed the temps to rise all the way to 91 here in town. finally about 4pm the front slid through the metro area ending the severe chances here in town, so my friend casey and i left about 5pm for western iowa to get back ahead of the front. some towers were forming pretty fast and a few of them would get pretty good sized before they would collapse on themselves. there were already severe storms in north central iowa and the line was slowly filling in back down to southeast nebraska. around walnut, ia on I-80 we started to run into some of the cells. around atlantic, ia, very heavy rain and some pea to marble sized hail started falling. about then the first severe tstorm warning in that area was issued. another stronger cell was coming up behind the first cell through atlantic, so we found the next exit and turned around to go back west to let this cell cross us as well. again there was marble to maybe a little larger sized hail. the line had backbuilded down to red oak, ia. we decided to head east a bit to hwy 25 and then head south and let this back cell come over us. radar was showing up to quarter sized hail possible so we waited on hwy 25 about 7 or so miles north of greenfield, ia, for a while as a real nice looking hail shaft headed towards us. the storm motions were nice, less than 30 mph generally, so unfortunately this cell weakened before it crossed us with just heavy rain. it was getting late so we thought it was time to start heading back towards omaha. while waiting for the most recent cell north of greenfield, there was a cell that was rapidly strengthening west and south of greenfield. we dropped down to greenfield and then headed west on hwy 92. about 5 miles west of greenfield we intercepted the last severe cell. grlevel3 was now showing up to 2.5" hail possible about a mile or so south of our position! we pulled over to experience the full brunt of the storm. there was actually about 3-4 "waves" of hail at our spot. the first had easily marble sized hail that lasted for a couple of minutes. there was a brief break before pea to marble sized hail fell again for several minutes. the next wave we could actually see coming down the road towards us! it was so cool to see the hail curtain moving down the road about 30 mph right at us! this period of hail had marble to occasionally quarter sized hail that didn't last too long before it quit one more time. finally some pea sized hail ended it. it was nearing dark now and this storm was very electrified. we headed south out of fontenelle and pulled over and took some great lightning pics for abut 20 minutes before driving back to omaha.


day 2 outlook(notice that 30% hatched area over eastern nebraska)

towers starting to go up just outside of omaha



some various pics of the different storms we intercepted. some of them had pretty cool structure

only real time where we saw some good rotation, but the storms were too high based to produce

some scud forming and rising into the base of the storm

radar grabs showing the hail core of the storm possibly producing baseball hail. we were 1 mile north of the storm where it is colored blue and white!










the pictures below were taken by my friend casey!