June 7th, 2007 Wisconsin

Tony Perkins and I left from Bloomington on a race South as convection began over NW IA racing NE at 60mph, I was driving Tony told me which direction to turn (except for once or twice which involved U-Turns, I admit I require constant reminders). We intercepted a couple of cells along I-90 then crossed over into the woods at Winona and tracked a single cell for quite a ways being in the precip area, it had TVS and Meso indicators, I believe it produced a couple tornado or severe thunderstorm warnings just after it got away from us and we called it quits. We lost it near Black River Falls where Tony noticed a monster cell racing out of La Crosse at 80mph! nearly right for us!! I stopped and ordered fry’s at Mc’Donald’s in Tomah.

The cashier asked if we were aware the sirens went off, and actually I did not (we just arrived) but, was not entirely surprised to hear that information. On a more serious note I was grateful she was passing that information along to drive through customers (and that they were still serving food). Then proceeded to setup video gear across the street(we would have reported any severe weather immediately as first priority). It took very little time to cover the distance from La Crosse to Tomah, producing a nice hook echo along the way. I snapped off this photo of Tony setting up his video gear next to a student from University of Illinois who drove up for the afternoon (his name slips my mind) who setup just next to us.

(Tony on Left)

We then proceeded to race after the 80mph cell (it varied in speed but, raced up to 80mph (according to NOAA), and 60mph at the slowest). Tony found a nice NE bound road that we were able to utilize for some time (I reported a wall cloud last year on this same road 5/27/2006 to La Crosse NWS), every now and then seeing the storm cell in the distance through a gap in the trees found in the great forest State. Even though we were roughly parallel with it traveling NE we quickly lost ground with it’s speeds up to 80mph. We called it off in Wisconsin Rapids where we saw tons of big hail and dozens of cars that no longer had windows as the big precipitation core(?) started getting lower on the horizon.

Hand Model: Chris White

Hand Model: Tony Perkins, note broken left middle finger

At this point the cell had ripped through the area some time before, we had given up the chase so the hail had been melting for some time. Once again thanks to Tony for his exceptional navigational skills in spite of his recent finger disability.

On a side note, the fry’s sat in a bag for maybe an hour before I had a chance to shovel a couple handfuls into my mouth, they were very cold and greasy, not hot and crisp like they usually are. I can’t recommend this particular Mc Donalds.

I will be reviewing video over the next couple of days, content to be added and/or corrected for accuracy over the next couple of days.

Thier happened to be a great double rainbow when we arrived back at the parking lot where we left from. If you click on the thumbnail and get a full sized version you will notice the bright primary rainbow on the left, and the fainter second ‘double’ rainbow on the right with the colors reversed.

Tony pointed out this shot, both rainbows reflected on the office building.

I took some shots for a panoramic on manual with the same settings but, have so far been unable to stitch them together for a decent panoramic. It was a fairly bright and complete rainbow at times.

Followup: If you take a look at the storm reports you can see the wind damage and tornado reports from the single cell we were after becoming severe out of La Crosse and traveling NE across Wisconsin.  It cut a diagonal line right through Wisconsin from La Crosse to Michigan.  Turns out about 40 Miles North East of Wisconsin Rapids around Matoon, WI the cell formed a long track tornado that traveled 40 miles, was up to a half mile wide, and has been rated an EF-3.  This is not surprising considering the speed of the cell (80mph) the SE flank of the tornado’s wind speeds would have been enhanced by 80mph.

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June 10th, 2007 Earth Science Picture of the Day »« June 2nd, 2007 Sibley County

June 2nd, 2007 Sibley County

I was at a Mcdonald’s near Belle Plaine waiting for my fry’s, just after I had had paid but, before I made it to the pickup window I hear a TOR warning for something near Gaylord, MN. I got up to the window and they told me to pull ahead and wait for my fry’s. It’s in these few moments that defines the chaser.. I elected to wait for my fry’s(and QP w/cheese) anyway. I don’t eat Mcdonald’s very often. While I was waiting I put an area just North of Gaylord into Delorme, I had no data at all. I tether and ever since I upgraded to Vista(forced upgrade, new laptop) I have had a heck of a time with the modem drivers for my phone. It’s rock solid as a PDA connected to Vista, but, as a modem the drivers get messed up all the time. I had NOAA radio and my eyes (and a laptop running delorme). Low cloud bases are great typically but, when the whole county goes up it makes if difficult to actually tell if what part of the storm your looking at with no real clearly defined structure. I arrived and and saw a cloud extending from the cloud base and trailing off (in the photo, it’s just plain vertical), unfortunately I did’nt get to pull over and take a photo until I had passed a growth of trees making it a little more ominous than it really was, their was no rapid movement associated with it. Lot’s of little cells the area, everything was pretty packed together it was difficult to determine what was what. The County got a pretty good soaking. I drove around the hail. I saw what I believe was a small out structure that caught on fire due to lightning, the police were just pulling up when I got close enough to figure out where it was coming from.

All in all not a bad day, short trip in the country.

When I arrived home I downloaded pdanet, works great, no driver issues anymore. Now I just have to rebuild my laptop before the trail period expires otherwise they have a new customer.

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June 7th, 2007 Wisconsin »« May 31, 2007 St. Paul Cathedral