June 7 Chase Account

My chase partner for the day was my actual partner (girlfriend), Alyssa. Although she had been on two other chases with me, the second being this past Thursday, both of them have been busts. We are both happy to say that the third was not the same, as we combined to be on a total of 5 tornado warned storms throughout our journey of central Iowa. We began the journey after I picked up Alyssa from Wallingford, IA and we headed south and east, grabbed some late lunch in Emmetsburg, then awaited for some solid initiation of storms. Several updrafts were trying throughout the area to finally get rooted, and it seemed like the place to do so would be in vicinity of Algona. After the first storm to reach that area became surface based and broke through any inhibition it quickly went severe and tornado warned over Kossuth, Winnebego, and Hancock counties. We unfortunately let that one go and wouldn't catch up to that one...

Our true chase began with two small cells just to the east of Emmetsburg, and watching them we decided to head north towards Fenton. As we neared Fenton on the backside of this storm we saw a few lowerings, however, no significant rotation was noted at that time. Within 10 minutes the two smaller cells seemed to complete their merger and we ended up with the tornado warning. We continued east directly behind, and eventually just south of the rotation noted on radar. However, continued development to the south and west began to interfere with this storm. We finally ditched our first tornado-warned storm at Crystal Lake, at that point deciding to position ourselves right ahead of the new tornado warned storm to our southwest. This storm was much better on radar, and also visually as broad rotation throughout the lowering was noted. A few smaller lowerings within this broad meso were noted just to the north of Wesley, no tornadoes though. We continued on this storm as it neared both Clear Lake and Mason City, taking a route just north of those towns allowed a nice view of the now rotating wall cloud to the north of town. Reports did come in of a brief tornado north of Mason City, however, neither Alyssa or I saw this occur. We continued on this storm, alongside of the rotating wall cloud, a few brief funnels, and the occasional 'spin-up' of dust. Not certain if any of these dust whirls were associated with the rotation above, or if they were occurrences of an RFD, or even just wind gusts with the constantly 'lining-out' storms. Either way, it does sound like at least one of the 'dust-whirls' was reported as a tornado, and until proven otherwise it will count towards the tornado count (a non-condensed tornado). Alyssa doesn't really want to count it, beings it wasn't the classic tornado, but it'll count.

Upon leaving this storm, we then began to slide slowly west, although nearing Clear Lake another storm became tornado warned near the Mason City Airport. At the time we were just a mile east of the airport, looking straight at this supposed rotation that was indicated by radar. We finished off a loop back around and followed this storm to the east of Mason City as it also became outflow dominant. At that point, the only storms that continued to be tornado-warned were a ways south and west of us. With over an hour of daylight left, we dove south towards these cells and intercepted the first tornado-warned cell near Galt. This storm was already outflow, but was a neat sight with rain-bands moving through and blue sky in the background. Unfortunately, with heavy rain already upon us, no good pictures or video were taken of this site (similar to much of the day).

This pretty much ended the day, as we dropped further south our potentially sixth tornado-warned storm of the day had its' warning expire and not reissued. Thus, we end our count with five tornado-warned storms as mentioned above. We once again met up with the TWISTEX crew near a field of wind turbines and gather up a few images of the underside of the shelf and the turbines. A few images may be added tomorrow or later date once they are uploaded to my computer...

Total Mileage: 420 Miles (Overnight in Ames and Return Included)
Total Road-Time: 7 Hours, 30 Minutes (Additional 2 hours, 45 minutes on June 8)
Chase Sights: One Tornado; Multiple Funnels & Rotating Wall Clouds; Wind Gust ~60 mph