06/21/09 Cleves, IA Tornado

Tornado touchdown near Cleves, IA

Sunday (Father's Day), consisted of a relatively short drive to north-central Iowa. A SLGT risk chase! Iowa has busted me twice already this month, but I thought well just maybe this would be the right setup that would actually "verify". An initial target of Williams, IA pretty much completely verified to my liking. After morning rains ahead of a warm front skies cleared by mid-morning leading to enough instability along the warm front for a few tornadic supercells later in the evening. On the drive, storms initiated just west of Williams, IA near Fort Dodge, IA as anticipated near 4:00pm. At first these cells looked really ragged, but got there act together rather quickly. I sat near U.S. 20 to get a elevated view and witnessed the first funnel cloud (rope) report that came in to my west. Storm quickly goes tornado-warned and wraps up a nice wall cloud quickly thereafter. From here I continued east on U.S. 20 as the storm began to interact with the warm front showing lots of rotation and rope/brief funnels that lasted a few seconds. Also, it had a beautiful clear-slot as well for a time. The storm continued east running nearly parallel to U.S. 20 through its life cycle and than dissipated outside Waterloo, IA. Unfortunately, other storms developed to its southeast obscuring some of your view toward the end of the chase. However, I was able to catch many funnel clouds, wall clouds, and a tornado touchdown near Cleves, IA. A HP-ish transition lead to some poor contrast visually, but oh well. Storm reports including the tornado reports can be found here. Also check out Walker Ashley's blog as he captured a tornado touchdown near Dike, IA to my immediate west.

First sign of convective initiation...

Convective initiation southwest of Williams, IA

First sign of rotation (background-right)

First wall cloud of the day...

Wall cloud now a mile away with funnel organizing (center-right)

Flanking line into the supercell along U.S. 20

Supercell with nice crisp updraft along U.S. 20

While watching the previous supercell I kept my eye to my southeast
as a another cell along the warm front was showing signs of rotation...

Wall cloud and tornadic circulation producing
a faint/weak touchdown
(Not the greatest contrast though center-background)
Click to enlarge...

Structure shot here with rotation present

Clear-slot wrapping in...hmm

Tornado!

Wide-angle shot of the Cleves, IA tornado

Inflow was quite juicy here as I make another play on the supercell

Odd green-ish look from the gust front seen here

Sharp abrupt change in weather eh?
blue sky (left) tornadic supecell (center-right)

Convective tower shot being sheared at sunset

Yet another...

Another cell I caught at sunset west of I-380

TIV2 calling it a chase at sunset

I've added a time-lapse of the day (above)

Another rewarding chase that showed tornado potential and this time verified. My first Iowa tornado! Now I will no longer be annoyed with Iowa after a couple busts out there this month...Persistence paid off!