Work in progress. Having left KS, chasing all day in NE then driving home the prior day, I intercepted this monster up by Albertville, huge monster, putting down some huge hail. It produced it’s first tornado around Coon Rapids while I was trying to keep up with the system on 610 a little bit to far South (or possibly fortunately a bit too far South you could also say), finally giving up just SW of Hugo. I was on Country Rd J at that point and my Eastward route was blocked by a lake on the other side of I-35E and given the second cell right behind it and slightly to the South I decided to head South on I-35E to get out of it’s way before I-35E seized up (as they do with any decent storm). Had I gone North on I-35E I most likely would have spotted the Hugo tornado. The tornado ended up causing one fatality, and 9 injuries, I personally witnessed no reportable conditions. Around the same time from out of nowhere a large F5 touched down in Parkersburg, IA producing something like 11 fatalities, and 90 injuries. I need to look back on that date, and check any case studies that have popped up since then, I had just returned from 3 days in KS/NE but, I never saw that one coming that morning either that or I was just so focused on the Twin Cities for the couple days leading up to the event. In any event I would have still stayed to ’spot’ for the homeland if I had futurevision.
**Will add stills, video, additional details sometime this winter**
January 13th, 2008 the NWS released a 50 page service assessment on the Parkersburg, IA F5 located here.
May 31st, 2008 Chase – MN/Twin Cities Surrounding »« May 22nd – May 25th Kansas/Nebraska/Minnesota