hlcater

(super long post) Well. Uh... I scored. I started the day near Newton IA, what was interesting was as soon as the first storm went off, it immediately went tornado warned(within minutes of 50dbz). I found this surprising and as it turned out, would set the tone for the day. My first tornado came near Colfax probably 30 minutes after the initial warning and was the 2nd(3rd) tornado that storm produced. I caught it from a distance with some good contrast. As this tornado roped out, the storm wasted no time cycling and soon dropping another tornado immediately south of Prairie City. This was my favorite due to the lack of damage caused and good viewing angle. and a video of the same tornado Again the storm wasted no time and was wrapping up before this tornado was done. I didn't get any good pictures of the 3rd tornado as I was driving at the time. Short live stovepipe near Monroe. The next two tornadoes featured a little more staying power than the last two. Both being strong looking cones near Pella, IA. One to the NW and another in Pella and to the SE. I got a pretty nice angle on the RFD, with the rain wrapped cone for tornado number 4. The RFD on this storm was particularly dramatic at times and something more characteristic of the High Plains than of Iowa. Normally this area is super HP and filled with rain. While under that cut, I could see deep into the storm's updraft. After passing through Pella, I came out on the other side and was immediately greeted by a very welcoming tornado number 5. This was the tornado that destroyed the manufacturing plant in Pella. I was perfectly positioned smack dab in the middle of the RFD for the entire duration of tornadoes 5 and 6. There wasn't much hail(topping out at nickle size), and the rain really wasn't too bad for Iowa standards either, but the wind was exceptional at times measuring at least 80-90mph. Tornado number 6 was a brief satellite this tornado, of which I didn't get any pictures. This would be the end of my chase as my car had decided it was fed up with the RFD and the red battery light came on. As such, I called the chase there and headed back early, with no further issue. However it doesn't appear I missed any more tornadoes. All in all, absolutely stellar chase with all different types of structure and tornadoes and easily the best chase I've had.(Although my chase portfolio is still quite small.)

Tomorrow in that instability department hinges entirely on how robust and the longevity of overnight MCS in NE. If it's able to push well into MO(Like the NAMs suggest) then warm front gets hungup and instability is slowed significantly, not to mention remnant cloud debris. This(or something close to it) seems to be the preferred outcome of the NWS. The models that lack a robust/long lasting MCS have no problem getting the warm front NE and build 4000+ SBCAPE.

Yup. 12z suite of both the NAMs and the GFS decided that the best course of action was just to take a dump all over Iowa and move to Misery. Gross. These runs have caused me to lose a good deal of confidence in the setup. GFS moved the surface low like 200 miles. Usually a change like that this late in the game means something. EDIT: What it meant was that the GFS's evolution of the surface low is being impacted by convection tugging the low further south and east than it otherwise would be going. I'm pretty sure...

Nice 500mb speed max here. Low levels need some work if we're looking for tornado potential, but things would probably lend themselves to at least a decent MCS as things stand now.

Overnight rain brought me to 1.62”

Picked up 0.86” from it and highest gust was probably 50mph. The SW side of CR has really gotten the shaft from every storm this summer.

Yards are getting quite dry out here as we’ve not had much in the way of rain since the beginning of July. Luckily though there appears to be some chances tomorrow into the beginning of next week. Some models even have 4” in spots. But currently expecting about an inch or so.

wedge tornado in MT/SD was probably easily capable of EF4+ damage. Violent looking for the majority of its life cycle. As of this post, that storm has produced at least 5 tornadoes and is still going strong.

I forgot what year it is. Nevermind!

Can we just fast forward to 2019? Let’s put this poor excuse for a season out of its misery.

Big fan of the warm front in MN today. I’d bet it does something. Weak storm relative winds will probably make storms HP, but 0-1km SRH actually exists with this setup because of that boundary. Storms should initiate as supercells and have a few hours to do something before probable upscale growth.

morning convection, while weak, has slowed progression of warm front significantly. Therefore all the storms near the border and north of the border will remain elevated for the duration of the event. Any tornado potential resides on outflow boundary along US 2.

HRRR and several other CAMs seem to be alluding to a chance for a few elevated supercells/hailers this evening and overnight. We'll see how that goes.

Iceland is on my (relatively long) list of places I need to visit. Absolutely stunning place. I’m almost sure you’ll enjoy it!

That storm was a wall cloud party, I was there. Issue was that there were 2 separate surface circulations and both kept spitting out wall clouds and neither became dominant over the other. What we get then is a whole bunch of wall clouds that lack the "umpf" to get it done. What was interesting is that I initially started in Mason City and bagged a brief bird fart tornado up there. Only issue with these storms was that everything was super HP, apparently there were more tornadoes, but I couldn't see them. Then as those storms went outflow dominant, came back to CR for a bit before the Tama storm initiated, then headed back out again. This storm was thankfully more classic in nature and around sunset which made it better. All in all, pretty solid chase today. Forest City bird fart tornado(if you look closely you can see debris above the road sign): Pretty nice whales mouth near Mason City: and just one of the MANY wall clouds the storm near Tama/Belle Plaine produced.

Yea I’m up in Mason City waiting to bust. HRRR has a completely awful handle on the current situation. Not resolving tstms in MN well at all.

what a weird polygon.

Looks like the next several days are going to be quite conducive to MCSs across the sub. Some people don't like MCSs, but I for one will never turn them down. (unless its at 9 AM washing out severe weather, thats always fun.) Maybe a shot at something early on in the day Saturday and especially Sunday out here. However, because it's 2018, any formidable speed shear just doesn't exist, so neither day looks like anything more than a mesoscale day.

Tomorrow looks decent, but I think wednesday looks likely to grow upscale into an MCS rather quickly.

Maybe I'm thinking too much into this, but I'm extremely interested if there's a relationship between the behavior of 2010s severe wx as a whole, and the late 1980s, and you could probably even include the early 30s and late 40s as well. All of these periods where characterized by low tornado counts, and many of these years were also fighting drought conditions in at least some part of the plains/midwest. Seems to be a distinct spacial correlation between these periods, almost like a 20-30 year oscillation. But correlation isn't causation. I wish someone smart would do a research paper into this, I think there might be something there.

Wrong thread?

17/7/2 (May: 1/0/0) June: 2/1/0 July: 3/1/1 August: 2/1/0 September: 3/2/0 October: 5/2/1 November: 1/0/0

Just gotta wait out the rest of this garbage decade. There’s been some good stretches, but as a whole, it’s sucked pretty bad. CFS dash generally likes June, but after the season so far, not seeing any reason to be remotely optimistic about anything

I found this graph/chart interesting. It is only active tornado days in Kansas, but with there seems to be a clear oscillation in activity in the limited data set we have.

I think that is contaminated. If you look at reflectivity(or MSLP) on the 12z NAM, you'll see that the NAM has a pretty significant looking MCS barreling down the warm front at 00z. All the soundings pulled ahead of this MCS(adjacent counties) are likely influenced by the convectively induced area of low pressure associated with the complex. This locally enhances wind profiles in the inflow region immediately in front of the MCS. The sounding I included is east of Champaign, and is probably more representative of the warm frontal environment on the NAM, which is still sufficient if you ask me. EDIT: that large area of subsidence from 850-500mb may also key into this area being an inflow region, however I am not sure on that one.