I was originally gonna play the MCV in Illinois but it became evident early on that it was going to be a wash due to a westward propagating MCS in MO the night before. Due to this, I chose to target Marshalltown back on the cold front as I believed odds of destabilization and recovery were higher than on the MCV. I had forgotten my SD card for this chase, so all these are all high-quality iPhone captures.The first supercell went up and matured rather quickly near Ankeny. But seemed too early for the LLJ and didn't really do a whole lot while I was on it but it did feature high contrast and was quite photogenic at times as Ethan showed above. Despite this, I abandoned it at Searsboro for the storm that was quickly becoming dominant to the SW.
Near Newton at 5:10pm.
The first storm came closest to producing at this occlusion here at about 5:45 near Kellogg and it's a shame it lacked the extra kick it needed, because a tornado there would've been wickedly photogenic and I was in the perfect spot to view it.
The 2nd storm was much more grungy and less photogenic, but never the less a little bit healthier than the first. Needless to say by this point the LLJ had begun to increase and sufficiently enlarge low level hodographs and this is really the only reason I can think of for why the first storm struggled to do much and the 2nd storm produced two tornadoes.This shot is looking at it as I arrived at 6:35pm
Insert tornado #1 6:44pm
and #2 at 7:03pm
The storm threw out a huge gust front after this and never really recovered inflow dominance. So I called the chase in Oskaloosa and went to go shoot sunset pics.
These are both unedited. The skies were really *that* saturated.