2024May21pictures.html

May 21, 2024

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After a non-chase day, we set our sights on a chase up near the Iowa / Missouri Border. The Storm Prediction Center put out a Moderate Risk Forecast for Severe Storms with a 15% Hatched Tornado Risk.

Our original plan was to head up to Southwest Iowa. On the way up, we made a quick run through of our favorite wildlife area at Squaw Creek (Loess Bluffs), but as we exited and grabbed a quick breakfast at the McDonald's in Mound City, Missouri and looked at the new data, we made the decision to alter our target based on what we were seeing in the models and in an attempt to avoid the hoard of other chasers near Interstate 80. We backtracked and made our way over to our new target in Bethany, Missouri.

As we watched from our location in Bethany, storms began to fire out to the northwest and quickly became warned. We held our ground as the broken line of storms worked their way eastward. We anticipated more storm development further south as the line continued to work its way east.

As expected, the line of storms continued to develop new cells to the south as it moved eastward. The only issue was, the storms that were south of the Iowa / Missouri border seemed to lack what was needed to create the turmoil that was going on to the north as every cell north of the border in Iowa was rotating and was Tornado Warned.

We were hearing reports of tornadoes on the ground to our northwest and it became obvious we were in the wrong place and quickly made the decision to head north into Iowa. We positioned ourselves to see the southern most tornado warned storm come at us amid the growing mass of other chasers lining the road.

We watched the approaching wall cloud. Although a few fingers would occasionally drop down, by this time, no real tornado threat was obvious.

As the storm went by us and showed little tornado potential, we let the storm go by us and put our attention now on a cell that was Tornado Warned southeast of us in Missouri. We plotted out the intercept point and made our way east to a spot just west of Albia, Iowa.

We lined up the incoming storm and watched the wall cloud come directly at us. It had a lowering, but we could not confirm whether it had a tornado. We moved out of the way to let the wall cloud pass.

We followed the storm northeastward and several times it produced some weak spin ups, but failed to condense to the ground.

Eventually, we let the storm go due to its speed, rain wrap, and the visible weakening as it moved away.

It was definitely a tough day of chasing. Hindsight says we should have stuck with our original target of Southwest Iowa and the probability of seeing a tornado would have been much greater. As it was, our southern choice failed to produce any tornadoes and then it was a catch up to the tornadic storms to the north. It goes down as one of those days you'd just like to do all over again.