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I'm not spending a bunch of time on this, since it sucked. In short, today was a high risk day(spc issued for those that don't know what that means..... http://www.spc.noaa.gov ), with strong winds in all levels, but all blowing mostly the same direction(unidirectional shear). Most all of Wisconsin was in a 30% hatched area for significant tornadoes with lesser amounts extending south into Iowa on down into Okloahoma. I only chased it because it was close(even if close meant driving over 600 miles on the day....*shrugs*). It panned out about as much as expected. I've yet to see anything worth a darn in unidirectional shear....even if there is speed shear with it(increasing speed with height). At least I can't think of one cool thing I've seen in that kind of setup. That said, had things waited a bit and not fired so early and had some more instability to stand up in the winds aloft, I could prehaps seen things turning out better. These small(and I mean small) storms did really want to form hooks on radar. I must have intercepted 5+ "supercells" crossing I80 east of Des Moines over to Iowa City. They all had the same behaviour, look hopeful for about 5 minutes, then look like linear, wet, crap. The one above is one of the later intercepts, on the west side of Iowa City. It was tornado warned. It looked better right before this, but I didn't get stopped soon enough to get a good shot of the very nice, rouded updarft. It was soon blocked by newly formed, cold, raggedy, low to mid-level clouds. They were the kind of clouds you never see in the neighborhood of anything worthwhile lol. It's funny the things you can note after chasing a while. You see them and just know things are toast.
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This was the only worthwhile moment of the day. I was actually ending the day early and starting to drive back home, sick of seeing the same storm trends over and over. At this point it was even hard to tell what on radar would be a "real" storm and what was an elevated shower, because the "real" ones were now so small as well. The only thing giving this one away, was it was skirting a hair right on radar compared to the others. So before going through Iowa City on home, I turn around to intercept it and look at it...since it was enroute from not far to my sw(storm motions were around 50 mph...not chaseable with a northeasterly heading). As it came out of the rain this is what I saw(after it took me 10-15 minutes to exit I80, flip around and head back east on I80.........construction area which I had to drive into town to turn around to use the on ramp.....with traffic and lights.....I love chasing). Anyway, it seriously took 10-15 minutes to get off I80 and back on it going the other direction.
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The best looking thing of the day and it wasn't even severe warned...yet. I believe Silver Lining Tours was the van that pulled up behind me here, the only chasers I noted in the area. I was surprised just how long the occupants stood outside in the nasty cg barrage. The lightning was striking well out from the updraft base, often well under 1 mile from this location. I'll probably have to grab a video still of one or two and put on here.
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This storm looked a whole lot like what I saw of the March 12, 2006 "super" storm as that crossed into Missouri from Kansas, on its 17 hour journey from Oklahoma to Michigan, though on a bit of a smaller scale. It just had a lot of similarities. It was looking a bit better on radar now and was now severe warned.
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As it gets near me it becomes tornado warned. It looked far from torandoing at this point however. It's funny to watch the traffic go by, while chasers are parked off the road watching what they are driving into.
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I go east, just north of I80. It was moving so fast it was very hard to gain any ground on it.
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It now has a pretty nice hook on radar. You can see the rfd cutting in here, left of that tree in the center. It actually had a very pronounced cut, which surprised me some, since everything else was the crappy linear and long rfd. I thought maybe it would have a slim chance at tornadoing, over on the far right of the image, north of this sharp cut, but the cut soon relaxed and it quickly did what everything else was doing this day.....turned into the long, liner, cold "supercell mode". Some directional turning of the winds with height would have made a huge difference this day. Better instability would have helped too, though I'd take the directional shear first. |
