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Well, if only all chases were this easy. I don't know if mother nature felt she owed me something or what, but thanks. Anyway, on to the account. I got off work at 5:30 and drove home expecting nothing but an mcs to fire sometime after dark. I honestly hadn't looked a thing other than reading the spc day one while on break at work. Sometime around 6:30(guessing) I by chance glanced out my window and hello! There were tcu everywhere. I was like weeee something is going to fire here very soon if it hadn't already. I quickly checked the tv and saw channel 6's current radar with a nice blip about 10 miles to my sw. Hurry mode began big time. My hands were actually shaking trying to tie my shoes from just being so excited and hurried. I was no where near ready. I was even out of gas from the chase the night before. This shot here is before gas on highway 30, just outside Blair looking wsw.
I quickly drove back into town and got gas. I even whipped out a credit card, wiping the dust off it, for quicker gas purchase(scared of possible wait inside). Then I drove east through town and crossed the river into IA. It's nice when you actually know the roads and don't have to mess with maps(didn't even get to bring my laptop and gps with on this one). Pulled over onto a dirt road and watched this beauty. Original speeds were reported ne at 55mph. It turned ene, moving 25 mph through most of it's very long life, north of I-80 in IA. Notice the vault on this thing! Ahhhhh and I didn't have to go looking for this. I'm pretty certain the only thing this was dropping was hail. 1.75 and 2.00 inch hail was a common report out of this storm.
These are all vid caps by the way. For most of the period leading up to this point, nearly every bolt was out of the anvil. Don't set a tri-pod up outside when this is going on. The winds at the surface were rather weak at this point.
I'm sitting on a gravel road facing north, looking out the window to the west at the base and vault region. All of the sudden the winds start to whistle through the telephone wires behind me to the east. I put my hand above the car and she was a howling alright, out of the due east.
This vualt was full of hail.
RFD notch coming in on the left side of the image.
RFD notching in almost overhead. This is where it starts to take on the horse shoe look.
I make one mistake by not following this storm. It won't happen again. It was starting to get dark and the thought I was having at the moment was that it was in the process of lining out(it was no where near lining out). This storm had a hook and a tornado warning pretty much the whole way to Des Moines.