April 14, 2026    
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Another Iowa outing seemed to be in our plans.  Ryan and I made the decision to head up to Northeast Iowa and make a play with the storms on the warm front.  The Storm Prediction Center had an Enhanced Risk with a 10% Tornado Forecast.

We left mid-morning with a target city of Iowa City, Iowa.  Upon arriving, we grabbed lunch in town and decided to move further north toward Waterloo, Iowa.  We stopped a few miles southeast of Waterloo, Iowa to watch how things developed.  A little blip on our radar screen right next to us was quickly turning into an explosive thunderstorm.  We could visually see the bellowing cumulus.





We watched the storm develop, but it seemed to peak and did not intensify any longer as it moved away.  We then turned our attention out to our west where a storm was continuing to intensify.



We moved westward toward that storm.  As we approached, we maneuvered our way to the south side of the storm to watch the base of the storm coming at us.  It made several attempts to spin up a major tornado, but just as the storm was about to produce the tornado, an updraft to its south would collide and interrupt the process as it got ingested causing the rotation to wind down and forcing the process to reorganize.

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As the storm moved east, we continued to stay out ahead of the approaching storm.  As the storm reorganized again, it produced a strong, rotating wall cloud and briefly spun up debris that was lifted into the air.





The storm continued to exhibit a rotating wall cloud as it moved east.  Eventually, the disruptions created from the collisions ended, but the rain began wrapping around the rotation hiding any chance for us to view a tornado.  The storm did produce a decent tornado, but was now completely hidden by rain.





We now turned our attention to a new cell that had fired to the southwest.  It had a Severe Thunderstorm Warning, but was growing in intensity.  To get there required us to beat its hail core on our road to get to the back side of this storm.  We thought about holding up knowing the hail size in this storm could easily take out our windows, but we made the decision to take the risk in an attempt to beat the core.  A Tornado warning was issued as we made our way to it.



Our gamble paid off as we barely slipped by the advancing hail core.  A few dime size hail stones were falling as we went through the very edge.  Now we were in a good spot near Onslow, Iowa with a very strong indication that a Tornado was about to happen.  As we turned a corner, we were given the picturesque view of the Tornado of the day.






When the Tornado lifted, we followed the storm east.  Just north of the city of Maquoketa, Iowa we pulled over once again to watch the storm cross the road in front of us.  Ryan shouts out "Tornado" as he spots another Tornado in the haze.





We continued to follow the storm eastward, but with no bridge to cross at the Mississippi River, our adventure came to an end.
Onslow, Iowa Tornado

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National Weather Service Storm Damage Survey

 		Maquoketa, Iowa Tornado Damage Survey To Be Updated on Survey Completion

Travel Log
17 Hours  -  848 Miles
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