May 24th, 2012 - WI severe weather setup, Shelf Cloud day

The day started in Eau Claire, WI outside the Days Inn we stayed at.  My chase partner Jon Williamson took his car to the shop early in the morning and got the power supply all taken care of so we'd be good to go with data and such.  SO, it was a matter of waiting, as we were in prime position for the 10% moderate risk setup day.

We stopped to gas up and ran into Reed Timmer and his crew with the Dominator 2.  Always a good sign, since Reed is pretty much the tornado whisperer.

We went off and found ourselves a nice spot with a great, open view and waited a few hours for storms to start rolling in.  We cranked up the classical music station and enjoyed the fresh air.

Storms started to pop, though in a linear fashion, and we were worried we would not be able to get on a discreet cell, but rather would have a linear mess.  We decided to re-position northeast a little bit as the storms made their way east to us, and as we pulled up to the storm, it started to look really intriguing.  

We pulled over and a gorgeous shelf cloud type of structure started to roll in.

The storm was moving quickly, so we pulled east away from it so we wouldn't get run over by the menacing looking core.  I looked up and saw a shnib of cloud that looked like a corkscrewing funnel.  I had my head cocked out the window and I said, "are you sh*tting me?" --- I didn't really believe it, but as we cruised down the road and I was taking photos, we passed a few chasers that were pointing up and shouting, "FUNNEL!"

I believe it could have been, as sometimes funnels can spin off the leading edge of line segments, but it certainly was brief if it was indeed a funnel.

The storm really was gorgeous...

The view was really awesome, ever changing and visually stunning.

We pulled over after crossing a little lake to get a view of the well developed shelf cloud structure.

We saw the best of the structure start to unravel and we dropped down to the next cell in the line.  There was a lot of upward motion bringing moisture up to the storm, sucking up clouds - very cool.

There was a lot of messiness going on, as the storms were merging with new blips forming out in front of it, and everything was blasting out a huge gusty mess.  But, it's sure fun to look at.  

The storms started to weaken significantly even though they were separating from each other in the line.  With the increasingly challenging chase terrain in northern WI, we decided to call the chase and head home.  By the time we got to Madison we saw that one of the cells had regained strength somehow, and was actually tornado warned.  A police officer reported a tornado, and a few chasers caught highly rain-wrapped fleeting glimpses of the tornado, but I've yet to see clear images, and it was certainly not photogenic.  It ended up being rated EF0.

Overall, a decent way to end the chase trip, and chasing on the way home isn't bad, either.  :)

~J

May 23rd, 2012 - MN storm

Jon Williamson and I made the drive south for the possible play for storms in the target area around northeastern Iowa / southwestern Minnesota. 

On the drive, the winds were extremely gusty, and were kicking up all kinds of dirt and dust from the fields.  I grabbed this snap with my iPhone before deciding to take my camera out, just in case something like a gustnado kicked up instead.

It didn't look like the storms were really going to be happening in our target area, and the setup for the following day looked much better for us, so we decided to head toward northern Wisconsin to get into position for the following day.  On the way, Williamson's cigarette lighter went out, which means that the power for our laptops, GPS and phones was gone.  We made a pit stop to look at fuses and replacements, as the non severe storms were approaching.  (photobelow from my iPhone.)

We realized we'd have to take the car in the morning to an auto repair shop, and so we went down to photograph the storms rolling in over downtown St. Paul.  I'm so glad we did!  As Williamson says, "Storm chasing isn't just about 'nadoes."  ;)

Carpio, North Dakota Tornado - 5/22/2012 Chase

Today I chased with my friend Jonathan Williamson.  My usual chase partner, Skip Talbot, was doing some (amazing!) aerial chasing this week.

The setup ended up granting us a bit of hope with a 5% tornado risk in extreme North Dakota.  We found ourselves in Minot by early afternoon, and we had met up with Nick Nolte who had been crazy enough to make an overnight drive from Michigan for the chase.

Nick alerted me to the sun halo overhead while we were fueling up.  How cool.

This little spot reminded Jon and I of a certain scene in Twister... "We've got drunkards!"

We got up to our first little spot where we sat for quite some time waiting for initiation.

Checking the winds out:

Locals Portrait #15.  "Bomber."  He stopped to ask us if we needed help with anything.

What a nice kid.  :)

Some cumulus starting to go up in a line west of us, what we were worried would just turn into linear junk.

Soon enough, we got ourselves a tornado watch (red box.)  Woo-hoo! 

And, we were off.  And the storm was gorgeous when we found a decent spot to pull off and watch it for a while.  What an amazing view we had.   Right as we gained visual of the base of the storm on our approach to it, we noticed a defined base and lowering right away.  "Is that a wall cloud?"  We couldn't believe the storm had developed so quickly.

Soon, it was severe warned...

Williamson:

Nolte:

Shortly we were joined by our friend Brad Goddard, from Convective Addiction.

The storm was really tightening up and started to redevelop a nice wall cloud again.

By now it had gone tornado warned:

Then as we were admiring this lovely wall cloud and noticing it had an obvious side to side motion... what on earth?  Is that pointy thing really what we think it is?

Holy crap, a funnel.  We were giddy with excitement and the light was phenomenal.  And, of course, a bird shot.

We kept repeating "Oh man, I can't believe it!"

We didn't realize it at the time, but we actually were witnessing a tornado.  You can see the small bit of debris at the ground in the shot above.  Here is a tighter crop of the tornado:

Unfortunately the beauty just didn't want to fully condense.  What a sight that would have been!

The storm was starting to move away from us, so we decided to re-position.  Suddenly, Brad noticed this funnel off in the distance.  We scurried into our cars and blasted off, luckily I was able to capture this with my long lens, as it didn't last for very long.

We took a few more stops along the way but the structure was never quite as good for us as it was at the very beginning.

Once the light broke through, it lit up the back of the storm.  Gorgeous.

On our last road following the storm, Williamson and I noticed some brown streaks or haze in the air ahead of us.  I was certain it was dirt and dust, and sure enough we got a little gustnado out of the guy.

At the end of the chase, just hanging around and deciding when to call it.

And my favorite sunset photo to date.  Not a bad way to end the chase, at all!

I also noticed that the Northern Lights were active later that night.  It was at kp=4.33, and in North Dakota, that's show-time!   Unfortunately we had too much cloud cover where we were driving, and this was all I got.  But I had to give it a shot!