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4-10-08
First off, I have to say that the quality of these images are ALL horrible. In fact, they could be some of the WORST photos I have ever taken, quality-wise. The time of these photos ranged from around 7:45-8:15, and with the cloud cover I definitely needed to set up the tripod, but I had no time for anything. I had no idea a chase was in store for today, given our immediate local parameters. I knew the chance of some lightning shots would be a possibility later in the night, but as far as a chase went, that never crossed my mind. I got off of work at 5 and headed for home. Shortly after, Joel called and informed me of some storms that just fired up in SW Iowa with a tornado already reported on the ground. This was actually some surprise initiation, in a way. The moderate risk was WELL to our south and CAPE values over our area was an astonishing 0 jk/g. But, the warm from was working its way toward us. In NE MO into western IL, CAPE values were around 1000. The 850 mb jet was also pretty impressive, with storm motions topping 50 mph. After an impulse decision to finally head on out, we departed Port Byron around 6 and hopped on 80 to 74 south toward Galesburg. We tried to stop and gather data but for some reason rest areas have let us down the first two chases of the year. So, a call was made to my brother Josh to update us on the radar. There was a tornado warned cell just south of Burlington when we left, but he said the warning was lifted and the storm was quickly turning to crap. We continued south, trying to punch out of the grunge and into the warm front before it became too dark to do anything. Dews spiked into the lower 60's with temps hovering around 66. Nice! Slowly but surely, clouds started to lift and the skies started turning more and more juicy. A new tornado warning came over the weather radio as we were approximately 20 miles or so north of Galesburg which really spiked our hopes. So, on to 34 west toward Galesburg. The plan was to get into position and try to intercept the tornado warned cell trucking up toward us. Once again, we put ourselves in great position, but naturally the warning was cancelled and we saw our featureless storm smooth out its base and become trashy looking. We just figured another bust was in order. As we sat and waited for who knows what, we just decided to let the precip core to the south overtake us just so we could see something. Some of the features actually looked pretty decent at times. Here's looking south as it approached. It started raining just enough here to annoy me with some small drops on the lens, which are clearly evident in the shot. This water would eventually smear on the lens and contribute to the already bad shooting conditions for the tornado.
And our once-warned TOR warned cell which is now fizzling to crap.
Here the rain on the lens was really screwing me. This wasn't anything too special, but the features were actually somewhat interesting at times. Nice sharp core.
It rained pretty heavy for a little bit, but we never experienced any wind. After this thing barrelled past us, we figured our chase was over. So, screw it, we turned around and headed back for 34 to start heading for home. Little did we know our fun was just about to begin. After we were on 34 for a few minutes, another cell with some very nice structure was to our NNE. As we neared, we could see a very interesting lowering, but didn't show any signs of producing anything too special at the time. We kept our eye on it and I said something along the lines of "if that thing is going to drop anything, it'll be right there", referring to a nice, fairly rounded lowering trailing the forward flank. A few seconds later, BAM! We were hit broadside on the passenger side by a sudden, extreme gust of wind. This was very strange. Something definitely wasn't right. It lasted for only a few seconds, and I do remember seeing a medium sized tree laying over off to the right. It could have been down prior to this, who knows. The wind actually pushed me clear into the left lane before quickly correcting and slowly easing back into my lane. After that, it was gone and was perfectly calm again. I remember repeating "what the hell was that?" After looking over my shoulder, I could see what just happened. We drove THROUGH a tornado! I quickly spotted the rapidly rotating wall cloud with VERY fast rising motions. It was a classic, blocky wall cloud, just what we've been waiting for all winter long. Finally! About 1/4 mile down the road we pull off, put on the emergency flashers, and quickly hopped out. Unfortunately, I think we might have missed the best possible shot of a condensation tube on the ground, but I can't complain about anything. The below shots were at ISO 1600, f/4 @ 1/20s. Those are some rough settings for a handheld shot, hence the lack of clarity and noise. Neat Image actually cleaned most of it up, but without ruining the picture even more, I had to allow for some to remain.
Even worse.
Very brief touchdown. This one lifted within a matter of seconds, but we counted somewhere between 6-8 seperate funnels forming around the large wall cloud.
Another funnel is forming on the rear portion while the original funnel in the first picture is still hanging down from the front, contrasted a bit against the darker stuff. I would have LOVED to have been a little closer to see any spin-ups that were taking place, because I know there were a ton.
A nice bowl now forming as visibility is quickly diminishing.
After Joel and I watched the video a combined 100 times, the verdict was in that in some of the shots above, the tube was put on the ground. Here is a severely contrasted video still which shows the little needle making ground contact.
Here's one of my HORRIBLE still images, cropped even more just to show how bad it really is. This, to me, looks like a debris shroud. I'm not sure what else it could have been. I guess it could have been a tree, but there really wasn't anything else around it that looked like it.
Joel called 911 shortly after to report it, but apparently there wasn't sufficient information to relay to NWS for an official report seeing as how it never showed up. I don't know what else we need to show. After he had sent them a letter explaining what happened along with the video, still no response. So what if we happen to videotape a 3/4 mile wedge and report it...will it also be ignored because we aren't "trained" spotters? I don't know what other proof we need to present. Oh well, that's a seperate issue.
Here's our location, just west of Galesburg. You can clearly see the small hook which produced our tornado.
Great to nab a tornado on our 2nd chase (1st REAL chase) of the season! Hopefully we'll be able to get our more this year. Enough of this low-light stuff.
Here's the YouTube video. Again, we are still new to the HV20 too, so I'm sure it's capable of pulling off MUCH better footage than this. As I said, I'm afraid we missed the best part of this show, but still worthy of adding another entry!