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3-25-07
Total Chase Mileage: 610 miles
Our first bust had to have come sooner or later. This was such a disappointing day.
It was decided early Saturday that a chase was going to take place. SPC issued a moderate outlook for extreme northeast Iowa, southeast Minnesota and portions of Wisconsin. Our initial target was New Hampton, Iowa. The idea was to make a quick stop in Waterloo to pull some data via wi-fi, but we decided just to buzz on through and not stop til New Hampton. We stopped there and gassed up and hit up a local Super 8. It provided some excellent internet connection. Reviewing the new SPC outlook we decided that it would be wiser to shoot further north and hop the Minnesota border. At this point, there literally wasn't a cloud in the sky from horizon to horizon. I wanted to take this picture since I thought it would be a stark contrast with later on.
Our targets.
.Here was the outlook:
Probabilistic tornado graphic:
Damaging wind graphic:
Large hail graphic:
So after grabbing a quick bite to eat, we book north again. We were making some extremely good time here. That was pretty much the only good part of the day. On the way we noticed some fairly deep SNOW banks yet hanging on to north slopes in ditches. Around this time we see some of the first cumulus clouds starting to form.
We decided to stop in a town called Spring Valley. HA! Absolutely ZERO wi-fi availability. It was now getting pretty frustrating as we thought it was almost "crunch time". Pretty ticked off, we book it out of that town and finally get to a town in Minnesota called Stewartville. We struggled for a bit here also but finally got a weak connection near a gas station. Right around this time SPC finally issued a mesoscale discussion right over our area. Before this we were getting somewhat pessimistic, but this instilled new hope. This was issued at approximately 1:55.
So here we are, sitting almost smack dab right in the middle of this MD. Our hopes rocketed skyward now. We left the gas station and continued to head northwest to some open land on the outskirts of town. On the way a nice cumulus field finally starting developing to our west/northwest. Here we pull over and grab a few stills.
After this we book just a tad further west. We decided to finally pull over as we were very close to the initiation line. Little by little, the cumulus started to grow and grow. Dewpoints around this time, to my best guess, were in the low to mid 60's. This was looking back to the northeast as the cumulus steadily climbed upward. We were actually in a VERY good position.
My boy held up very good for the chase!
Here's Joel filming our incredible chase. I'm really not sure what to do with the tape; save it to look back at and die laughing or just smash it into pieces.
So we wait....and wait....and wait. Cumulus were sure taking their sweet time getting going. It's almost like they were afraid of something. I suppose it could have been us. We are pretty freaking intimidating, that's for sure. Hopes were still fairly high at this point. The weather radio Joel bought was such an asset on this chase. It was picking up signal way out in BFE. I had time to take lots of pictures. I mean, alot of pictures. I got carried away. How foolish of me to think that something would happen on our longest chase to date. Hey, there was a wind farm!
If you notice, the bases of these cumulus were extremely elevated. Eh, big deal for now, right? I'm sure things will change.
A little later. Bases still elevated, still not much going on. Cumulus still growing slowly. Any time now!
Man, this is going to make for some exciting footage!
Ok, FINALLY some towers started to glaciate. Right about this time we actually got pretty excited. Oh yeah, I should also mention that the entire time we sat at this location, the wind was a constant 40j-45 mph! That actually made it pretty cool in its own way. Here is the first tower that Joel spotted, to the right.
Things actually did sort of take off here. More and more towers started to take on an anvil, but it just seemed that as soon as they hit a certain point, they just completely crapped out. A little before this we noticed the air actually getting a little bit colder. Things still looked halfway promising at this point, however. Rain shafts started to appear under the far updrafts.
Looking back to the north.
Ok, now we are to the point where worry starts to set it. Things were just completely and utterly unimpressive. It looked like garbage before long to the southwest and the tops just weren't getting very tall. They looked very, very weak. After the first tower we noticed, we soon found out that it eventually did go severe warned near Goodhue Co., but it only lasted a very short while and never did much. It did drop a non-rotating wall cloud, but that was pretty much the extent of it. We were somewhat happy to hear that, but the more time that went by, the more we realized that these updrafts just weren't getting rooted. The bases started to look worse and worse, getting more and more elevated. We were really biting our nails now. A new tower goes up here and soon another rain shaft appears.
As you can see, bases are still pretty elevated and the tops look rather pathetic. Right about now we finally start to face the fact that a bust was in the very near future. There were some pretty cool sunbursts! I like to think we came all the way to Minnesota to see these incredible rays. We are in an elite field of sun ray chasers. Just in case you didn't catch on, there was some sincere sarcasm there.
Yes, I know the horizon is not straight, but this chase deserves absolutley no extra effort.
Soon after, things REALLY fell
apart. There was absolutely zero organization and bases became even
more elevated. Yep! BUST! After a few VERY choice words and some
violent gestures toward mother nature, we faced reality and headed for
home. Dewpoints completely fell off the table which killed off
any more convection that was to fire. Listening to the weather
radio on our painfully long drive back home we heard the dewpoints
dropped to 45. That's ridiculous. As I said, we were sitting in a VERY
good position if the storms would have continued to fire along the line
into northern Iowa like what was supposed to happen. It was actually
sort of nice to know that we weren't the only ones who busted today
though. Later on we realized that many other people did as well. They
were actually all around us but we never met up with anyone. So a 600
mile trip turned out to be just a pure waste of gas. These spring
systems are so tricky. Now I am going to be especially leary on long
trips. I don't think we'll be embarking on any more long trips like
this until late April, early June. Hey, had to get this one out of the
way!