Corn Field Chasing

Mar 23rd Mt. Hope KS/Severy KS Severe Storms

2009-03-24T23:22:00.004-05:00

Total trip distance: ~1300mi.

Shot at 2009-03-24

Tim Jones and I headed out at about 5:20AM yesterday morning from Cedar Rapids to make our trek west. We ended up playing the dryline for the day.

We decided to ride the Kansas turnpike, started seeing storms firing in the Medicine Lodge area and jumped off at El Dorado to 254 and headed west to 96, before finally ending up around Mt. Hope IIRC when we started jumping onto the farm roads to fine tune our spot.

This was just south of town looking SW, this is a little before the wall cloud got a little more solid, RFD was trying to break in at this point but was having troubles.

We sat in this spot for about 10min, ran some streaming video for a bit and prayed for it to develop a bit more...but no dice.

Shot with NIKON D40 at 2009-03-23

Decided to run NE to try and reposition, but as we followed it northeast it started to lose form, hit light hail and some rains, then decided to let it go.

Took a break in Newton, KS for a bit to fill up and take a look at other storms down the line, saw a cell forming well over Grant County, OK and decided to head south and the east before Wichita to position ourselves around the storm.

We then encountered the worst technical problems ever....no data, no stream...no nothing. We had to just fly east hoping to stay ahead of the storm while Tim was in the back trying to coax data cards into actually function. During that time we heard the warnings on the HAM and just about had aneurysms because we were so out of position.

We finally got data at 5:50ish, we turned off at Severy, KS finding out we were right in the path of the storm, but not having much left in it in terms of tornado threat. Then the camera decided to not be recognized on the computer for stream, so I pulled out my little camera and try and get something on stream/tape.

We hit 99 just west of Severy and headed south a couple miles before stopping off on a farm road to salvage anything. We were getting some strong and close CG at this point on video.

Shot with NIKON D40 at 2009-03-23

Watched some broad but slow meso rotation for a couple of minutes before it started outflowing like crazy. We were so frustrated at this point that nothing was working that we just punched through it.

Shot with NIKON D40 at 2009-03-23

Just before getting destroyed by this core...

Shot with NIKON D40 at 2009-03-23

Pulled off a half mile or so after hitting the outflow and got 1/4 inch hail as we just didn't care anymore. We let the storm go bye bye and called it a day and headed to Chanute for the night.

We had some positives and negatives. Positives was we finally got out of Iowa to chase. Second thing is we got the most viewers ever on our stream (KGANWX) that we've ever had, which I think was close to 250 on the first cell. Third thing is I got some more experience chasing with a partner, and a great one at that.

Negatives is nothing worked when we needed it to...too many equipment problems to even count. We also missed the tornado warned life of the second cell. All in all I think it was a good day for being early in the year, got one storm on the verge of dropping, and the other was strong but outflow dominant, had a good core punch and hail.

Year in Review Pt 2, July 10th

2008-12-27T15:07:00.005-06:00

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.

I think it was my best solo chase, I have a couple shots of the storm over on my DeviantArt page (http://g00b3rs.deviantart.com).

- Aaron

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EDIT: Panoramic at the end of the chase.

Winter Chase, Dec 8-9

2008-12-10T21:29:00.012-06:00

Last week, after looking at models for Dec 8-9, Tim Jones (Meteorologist at KGAN-TV, and also my chasing partner and co-worker) gave me a call saying he wanted to chase the incoming storm, and actually stream live back to our station for coverage for viewers. We streamed video via StormStudios.com (KGANWX is the stream if you ever see it on there.)

Decided on Decorah, IA as the target, since East-Central Iowa's updated models had very small amounts coming down. Boy was it a PERFECT choice Tim made on that one.

Route: 105 miles

He picked me up at about 10:45am on Monday. Took it slow since the roads were getting a little slick, started encountering some ZR just north of Independence, and stopped off in Oelwein for a quick snack.

Just south of Eldorado, IA @ 1:36PM, hitting some rain

Going through Calmar, IA @ 1:49PM 13min later, frozen solid.

Got to Decorah at about 2:30, decided to grab a motel room and wander around town to get to know the way of the land, then went downtown for our first cut-in shot for the station.

Downtown Decorah @ 4:00PM

Went around town for a while, sunset came quick and the snowfall started to pick up.

Downtown @ 5:15PM

Back at motel room to grab tapes and batteries, 6:40PM, snow starting to coming down pretty well

Had a freaking AWESOME dinner here at The Oaks. Probably the best restaurant steaks both Tim and I have ever had. If anyone ends up in Decorah and wants some good dinner, you better go here. 8:19PM

Back on the road, going west on HWY 9 on the south outskirts of town, 8:30PM. The headlights up there was actually a police car on the side of the road where a car had slid off the road, went down a 6ft embankment. Occupants were fine and the towing coming was there shortly to pull them out.

Setting up for another liveshot for the station, sitting in a upper parking lot at Luther College on the West side of Decorah, snow falling pretty heavily now, had about 5-6 inches at this point, 10:00PM

We finished up the 10PM show back at The Oaks and setup a final shot for the show, then went in and watched them take our shot! =] 10:30PM, overlooking the intersection of HWY 9 and Short St. on the southside of Decorah.

In the bar, there's our shot! =]

Went back to the motel and caught a bit of sleep, both Tim and I were experiencing crazy stuff when we closed our eyes, we kept seeing "snow" like sights when we closed our eyes =P. We got maybe 4 hours of sleep until we had to get back up and get ready for our morning show at 5AM.

Back in downtown Decorah, and they were in full force clearing the snow. They 2 road graders along with another gathering the snow in the center of the streets, and two wheel loaders scooping the snow up, with about 10 dumptrucks convoying in and out to get the snow out of town. They don't mess around here man.

Road grader plowing, 6:25AM Tuesday morning

The windrows they created, ready for pickup 6:35AM

We stayed downtown for anoter hour or so to get our morning show shots and phoners in, and decided to go back to the motel and pack up to head back.

Man this was hilarious, he couldn't have gotten that any plate any more correct =] 8:42AM

Got on the road about 10min later, roads outside of town were pretty iced over, temps were still in the low 20s. This was heading into Maynard, IA. at this point winds were coming out of the north, was picking up some pretty good drifting snow. 9:21AM

Ended up doing out final liveshot for the show just north of Oelwein, IA. This was also my final shot for the chase. All in all it was a good storm to cover, we not only got good video and shots, but having the live streaming video gave our station a great tool to show the people exactly how the roads were before they headed out for work that morning. This is going to be great for us to use come storm chasing season.

See you all next chase,

Aaron

A Year in Review, Pt. 1

2008-12-05T15:50:00.010-06:00

Well, my first posts is ending up being my last posts...of my storm chasing "fiscal" year I should say :)

2008 was the first year I went for storms, mostly inside of eastern Iowa. From about January-April 2008 I was in training mode. I had mostly gone by ear on things I had learned about storm systems, mostly scouring Wikipedia to get general information. But I finally decided I wanted to learn how to forecast and predict what was going on.

With the help of these great sites, I was on my way:

Mr. Jeff Haby's website (http://www.theweatherprediction.com, a great website for everything weather/storms, very technical articles)
Mike Hollingshead's Storm 101 DVD (http://extremeinstability.com , check out his website, awesome chaser with great chase accounts)
StormTrack (http://www.stormtrack.org , a great storm chaser community, very informative and always has forecasting and chase accounts for pretty much every storm system)
NOAA Storm Prediction Center

At the beginning of the year I went out with a printout from the last SPC convective outlook, and any mesoscale discussion (if there was). From April-early May I went with just that, watching the storms as they passed, analyzing structure. Mid May I went and got a Nikon D40 DSLR to get my documenting on the way.

I'm going to pick three chases that were memorable,
____________________________________________

The first storm I caugt was a very memorable; May 25th. I caught the Parkersburg, IA storm as it just spawned the tornado that hit that town, and was passing through Hazelton.

I was at Lake Delhi that day, just south of Manchester, Ia...decided to sum up some guts and go after it. I didn't get many shots (was the first week I had my camera)

Coming back to Delhi, shelf cloud close on my tail

Back at the lakehouse, decided to hunker down and watch it pass by. Was a strange view on the whole thing. It was quite calm here, but I knew that Parkersburg was being destroyed.

Dark to light, seeing more crisp view of the southern section.

You know I didn't see much of that storm, but it was a defining moment in my short chasing career so far.

In my next two review posts I'll have a lot more to talk about and a lot more pictures. So I'll gather the good shots from those, and I'll post again soon! :)

-Aaron