July 11th, 2008 Chase SW Metro Twin Cities

I did not want to head up into the forest but, I guess some had success. I took a half day off so I had lunch with the kids followed by Journey to the Center of the Earth (IN 3D), great movie, take the kids now! I arrived home around 4:45.

Things just did’nt impress me(it should have, conditions were ripe and the system was building Southward), I really should have positioned myself out West at that point but, I never left the house until 7:35PM as things came a little closer to the metro, hoping to catch the Shelf out West followed by a back lit Anvil during sunset, I skipped the second part. When I left the house immediately I saw mamatus, a dying storm but, cool to photograph;

I headed to flying cloud and shot the Shelf Cloud up front, returning home I parked on a multilevel parking structure to watch the rest of the storm the rear of the storm was lit up a nice orange during sunset but, just too far away to get any unique photos in time.

The preliminary Wilmer storm survey rated the damage of EF-3 with an estimated path of 8 miles and a width of 200 meters through Wilmer causing 2 injuries and property damage.

Work in progress, months behind, I figured I would get something out here to begin with. Photo need some touch up’s and closer review.

EDIT: Previously incorrectly filed under June 28th.

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June 7th, 2008 Chase – Northern Iowa

I headed to Iowa Saturday morning, not too early. I stopped at the tourist barn just over the border of Minnesota and picked up a couple complementary maps and other touristy attraction type material. Then took a right a little ways into IA towards Algona. I passed several decent looking baby cells some that grew to monsters, some that just kind of petered out or were absorbed by larger cells. I was about to keep going but, a passing cell looked interesting so I followed it for 10 to 15 minutes, then turned around. Once I received my NEXRAD updates the thing had surged to epic proportions and I turned around again and followed it back towards I-35 but, Northeast. The first tornado report came soon after, I crossed a nice debris path near Thomson (perhaps before, need to check my GPS logs of where it was that I pulled over, it was right on a tornado report so I did not report the ‘wind damage’ again(I did not witness the tornado I would have had to report wind damage, I did not want to trivialize the tornado report that had already gone out). But, basically take a farm field and scatter sheet metal, insulation and a bunch of other junk all over the place and snap some power line pole’s and that’s about what I saw. I kept after it, I was losing it as it was going NE at 45 to 55mph, where I could only go North or East at 55 but, surprisingly I was able to not lose too much ground very fast. I was positioning myself to drop back for the next cell right behind it which was also tornado warned when I lost data and somehow got sandwiched between the cells so I ended up in Freeborn County on I-35 on the Minnesota side and had to wait a few minutes before I crossed back between the next set of cells. I headed down to Mason City where I stopped just East of the airport and watched a large meso for quite some time that was warned along with the cell right behind it, then watched as a plane landed, he never had a problem. The Meso was directly North, a bit overheadish. The airport was to the West, this is looking SW on approach.

Storms were moving more East now, and I was just South of the line making it much easier. I ran into one of the DOW’s, the TIV, and some pimped out armoured hummer as if it was patroling for roadside bombs. On each of the four times I left the state to chase this year, I ran into the DOWS and TIV (2 days KS, 1 day NE, 1 day IA). I am not sure if this is a good thing or a bad omen until I see the series this fall.

I gave up around 7pm wanting to get home at a decent time, and I wanted to cross thru the line of severe storms before twilight (it was already pretty dark at the time 2 hours before sunset due to the cloud cover).

It will be a while before I review the video and catch up on the 5 or so missing chases, just trying to keep up at this point. I did however get my laptop back fully repaired and functional (need to find the firewire cable though!!).

I added a couple quick videos of the highlights, if you have difficulties with Vimeo, try You Tube.

EDIT: The second armored vehicle is the TIV2, I had not seen it with the rest of the group previously. It weighs 16,500lbs and is 4 wheel drive with an ATS Super Diesel retrofit.  It is still in testing phase and was undergoing some changes/fixes when I passed by the DOW/TIV caravans on the May 22-24th in various states (KS/KS/NE).

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May 31st, 2008 Chase – MN/Twin Cities Surrounding

A diagonal band of slight risk was painted diagonally through Minnesota, 2% tornado but, mostly hail and wind. The business end of the storm was expected to form in the North-land and move into the metro SE @ 30ish? In the interim I went down to Owatonna, and Waseka to see if I could find some hail or some suitable structure to photograph while waiting for the big storms. I ran through some accumulated hail some time after it fell as well as a couple of mildly flooded roads. I also ran into some horses that were a bit shell shocked, high winds had blown the leaves onto the horses, hopefully the trees provided a bit of shelter from the hail.

I had pre-prepared steaks for the grill to dinner as I positioned for the main show I called to see if I could alter those plans, I guess were having steak for lunch on Sunday..

Here is the supercell from 60 miles away that ripped it’s way thru the metro and caused a couple of tornado warnings to be issued for the NW Metro(and hail damage). I saw a few chasers expertly stick with this cell from the far Northwood’s wince it came, like brown on brown rice.

I found a good spot to hold up in, unfortunately their was a civil defense siren about 100 feet behind the parking structure directly at my level on the top of the parking structure. I have video, but, I was unable to hear for about a half hour.

I took cover at the ground fully enclosed floor when the hail came, good sized stuff, and watched the traffic, it caused a horrible accident on 169, I did not see it but, did see a fair amount of police, fire, and ambulances to drive by with their sirens causing additional pain to my hearing.

I took 20+ minutes of video but, my laptop with the firewire port is still in for repairs from it’s fatefull drop on 5/22.

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May 25, 2008 Chase – Twin Cities Metro, Minnesota

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.

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May 22nd – May 25th Kansas/Nebraska/Minnesota

I went chasing in Hays, KS on May 22nd and 23rd, Nebraska on the 24th, and did spotting locally on the 25th. I am going to try and get the 25th’s report up first but, have quite a bit of catch-up to do. I am having a bit of a challenge with my laptop, I dropped it on the early afternoon of the 22nd from about 2-3 feet which crushed the AC adaptor, I quickly ran to Radio Shack for a replacement (the adaptor jack was totalled) which works but, now I need to send it in for Jack Repair. I have copied all the stills and about 4 of 6 hours of video to a portable hard drive but, I do most of my editing on my laptop.

Put a video up from the 22nd but, you will need a fast computer to view it.  If your computer has difficulties try this low res compressed version.

TODO: 5/22 KS, 5/23 KS, 5/24 NE, 5/25 MN , 5/30 MN

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