April 5-6, 2010 Chases
April 5: NE Kansas, SE Nebraska bust
I watched this day on the models 10 days out. Never looked at a setup as long as this one, probably spent 10 hours looking at models before the chase day, maybe more. Didn't really matter though, the dryline was way more progressive than any of the models had shown, so our target was much further east. Got off work at noon, picked up Ashleigh, and headed south on I29. Met Chris and his uncle Joe in St. Joe, MO. We headed east from there into NE KS. Stopped and talked with Dustin Wilcox in Fairview Kansas. Soon it became apparent that we would not see daylight initiation, so we started the drive home. But of course when I am halfway home I see storms going up to the south. I get off the interstate a rockport and race west into Nebraska. I don't have any data, I was riding with Chris earlier in the day and using his, and now its dark and there is a tornado warned storm 20 miles to my west. I was sitting in Sabetha, KS talking to Chris and Jared on the phone with radar updates. Due to lack of lightning I never got to see any structure on the storm. Of course when I get on the storm it quickly dies. So Ashleighs first chase was a pretty miserable bust. To make it all better (sarcasm here) we missed the biggest Geomagnetic storm of the year and auroras that were probably at one point right above us. Here is the Only picture of the day... Convection with sunset light, Just south of Auburn, Nebraska looking south.
Start making the drive home and Chris calls and tells me what we missed, that was gay. Back in Omaha just as I get to my house a storm goes up and produces very heavy rain and quarter sized hail for about 30 minutes. Lots of flashes of lightning (hardly any visible bolts) and thunder. Excellent, so I just drove 500 miles to see the coolest storm of the day in (literally) my backyard. Passed out after a LONG day, worked 6am to noon then was in the car until midnight.
April 6: Central/NE Iowa
Woke up at 11:20am and immediately looked at morning obs. Looking better than it had, I figured I'd chase today to make up for yesterdays bust. Chased with Chris again, originally we were targeting southwest of Des Moines, but once again the models were wrong and mesoscale features were badly forecasted. Dryline was a little more progressive than guided but mainly it was the south plunging warmfront that was supposed to drift north (or stay fairly stationary). We ended up in Des Moines for lunch watching promising towering cumulus from the west side of town. End up going NE of town to developing storms. Originally we thought they would be on the boundary, but soon realized that they were going well north. figuring the day was shot we ditched the boundary and followed this storm to near Winthrop, IA (only about 20 miles from Wisconsin!) The storm has a nice RFD cut with 50mph winds and some pretty rapid cloud motions, not real organized rotation however. Here are a few images...
Starting to head home we see a storm had gone tornado warned south of the warmfront(doh!) We raced after it at 60mph while it traveled toward us at over 45mph! Had to go through some nasty mud roads to get there in time, but we were treated to a VERY brief wall cloud. It quickly became outflow dominant from here and the day was done. Got Dinner in Cedar Rapids and started the 4 hour drive home. Not exactly worth the money we spent on the two days combined, but can't really do anything since the days were forecast to be good ones. Here is that last tornado warned storm we were on at the end of the day...
Looking forward to Storm motions <40mph later this spring lol, it sucked trying to keep up with these ones.
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