April 5th, 2010

This was the first chase of the season. Got the gear tested out on April 1st, everything worked fine today (minus a couple of glitches but those were quick fixes). Left home at 9:30 am with a target of southwest Iowa. SPC 8:00 am outlook bumped up the tornado risk to a 10% hatched risk. Warm front was progged to move north in to northern Missouri/southern Iowa by evening. Forecast instability was good, shear looked good, and both the GFS and WRF showed a large area of considerably weakened CINH (although not completely gone). Left home, got about an hour north of Des Moines when I decided I would continue south past Des Moines instead of cutting west on I-80 and then dive south. Got to Des Moines and storms started to go up. A couple warnings got issued in and around Des Moines. These were well north of the front and were definitely elevated. Still, I putzed around with a couple severe storms down towards Osceola, IA since it was early afternoon. Around 3:00 realized it was time to cut the crap and get south to my real target. Shot down I35 in to northern Missouri to get on the warm front and then headed west. Long boring story short I drove around watching towers go up and dry out. Big ole bustola. But I did run in to Bart Comstock and Matt Gingery. 854 miles, only one picture and that was of the crap elevated hailer up in Iowa.