Corn Field Chasing: Year in Review Pt 2, July 10th

July 10th

Now, call me crazy...but I decided to do what my blog title states....drive a perfectly good car into a crazy storm.

I was at home having a break from my 4 July weekend at the lake, and peaked over to SPC. Well whadayaknow....severe warned cell about 30 miles from me to the NE, just biting the NE corner of Linn county. I had 1/4 tank of gas and thought what the hell, let's go for it.

Turned out to be the best personal chase of my short season. The video markers are where I took stills.

Here's my route, all in all about 100 miles traveled there and back.

4:45pm CST, just pulled out of my neighborhood, cell is very obvious just over the trees behind the gas station, about 20 miles from me at this point.

Pulled over about half way to Central City at the Troy Mills turnoff, just to call a friend to get some storm updates. Was thinking of heading north for a cell behind this one, but decided to keep east and catch this one.

Just north of Central City now, pulled off for a quick shot, starting to see wall cloud structure. I am on the southwest side of the storm looking northeast.

Heading due east now on Monticello Road, just outside of Coggon. Looking at the wall cloud, with a bit of vorticies dancing around just over that farmhouse.

A couple more miles up from the last shot, about to stop and see how this pans out, gaining some defined structure now.

Pulled off, money shot.

I stayed here for a bit, it definitely wanted to touch down a number of times, but just didn't muster up the power to do so, I had called it in tornado warned 10 before this, because you just can't be sure, and this thing was bearing down on Monticello.

I tried to cut the storm off by heading towards Prarieburg, but it had shifted to more of a easterly track and picked up a bit of speed, so I decided my best bet was to turn around and head back towards Monticello, and caught a nice shot off to my west.

Back on Monticello Road, got to see a bit of a wider shot of it, and caught this shot with some lucky timing.

Got into Monticello, and decided that it was getting out of my range that I felt like going, and the roads ahead of me weren't offering much in the way of chasing.

Turned around and got one last shot of the storm, anvil wasn't very defined, but a nice shot nonetheless.