Chase Account - July 9

Several rounds of severe weather swept across portions of northwest Iowa yesterday, from mid-afternoon hail to evening and overnight storms that left hail, winds, and heavy rainfall across parts of the state. I made a trip out to view the storms on two occasions yesterday, once during the mid-afternoon hours between 3:30 and 4:30 PM. This was the initial round of storms that produced some large hail from the SD/IA borders eastward to near Highway 71. Upon arrival to the storms, they were weakening significantly and led to only heavy rains that would obscure your view pretty good. On this trip we would also arrive upon an accident that occurred just west of Ruthven, IA where it appeared a vehicle may have been pulling out of a private lane onto the highway and did not see the cross traffic. A bad scene there as both vehicles were badly damaged, however, have not heard any news about this accident and how either drivers/passengers fared.

The second chase came during the waning daytime hours, from ~8:30 PM to after 10 PM across portions along the Dickinson/Clay county lines and back towards Wallingford in Emmet county. Several occasions of strong lightning strikes, and torrential/blinding rains with the multiple storm cells that we crossed paths with. On the backside of the last cell to be severe warned across these counties we were able to capture several occasions of 3/4" hail and strong east-southeast winds of 40+ mph. Video was captured from the dash cam for the entire trip, however, nothing significant to really note and share... A nice local chase/spot to add on for the year; now we'll wait for some true summer isolated cells to actually have some photogenic quality to the storms!