June 11th, 2008

Headed out around noon with Tim Purington with an initial target of somewhere around Sioux City. We got just north of Sioux City when storms started firing from southwest Minnesota all the way to central Iowa. The storms quickly formed a line and things werent looking good with the system looking like it was going to line out right away, but shortly after the storms congealed in to the line, rotation started showing up in a lot of the embedded cells, most of the storms became tornado warned shortly after firing. One note is these storms produced next to no hail, which is very rare for amount of moisture present and the type of storms that fired (supercells). We tried finding the areas of rotation around Paullina, Iowa when an update for the tornado warning came out saying that there were three areas of strong rotation in and around the Paullina/Marcus, Iowa area, we were in between both of those cities. We headed east to try to get in front of the line, find some rotation. The backside of the storm where it was mostly rain free had some incredible structure, but that didnt last long as we got closer to the core which contained more than terrential rain. We drove through it, followed the storm as it tracked northeast towards Spencer, Iowa. We got stuck in the core most of the way to Spencer, but as we finally got out of it about 3 miles south of Spencer along highway 71, we saw a farm that was heavily damaged, and many powerlines down along the highway. We couldn't have been more than 3 miles away from the tornado when it hit the farm, but due to the rain we never saw the tornado even though we were so close. We continued to follow the storm as it moved northeast while still showing strong rotation, but after a while we let it cross the border in to Minnesota as it looked like it was weakening and the storms to the south were becoming the dominant storms. We sat around Buffalo Center for a while waiting for the storms to the south to move north towards us, tried intercepting them since they were still tornado warned even after dark, but by the time we got in front of it the tornado warnings were cancelled and replaced with severe thunderstorm warnings. We headed back towards home and got home around 1:00 in the morning. All in all not a bad chase, we were on tornado warned storms across half the state of Iowa, but due to the rain, haze/humidity, and very low LCL's were never had the visisibility to see the tornadoes that were within just miles of us a couple times. The lightning with these storms may be the most intense i have ever witnessed, many occasions intense CG's within a half mile of us. Although the storms didnt not produce much hail, and didnt not look real great on radar, they were some of the most intense storms i have seen to date. Also, from other's experience from the day, it shows how dangerous HP supercells can be and how important to know where you are at all times in relation to the storm. I didnt get many pictures worth posting due to the rain and low visibility, which is dissapointing because it was actually one of the better chases i have had. Thoughts and prayers with the families affected by the tornado that hit the Scout Camp in northwest Iowa.