| tubularbills |
I know there are some avid weather enthusiasts and meteorology majors in here, so i wanted to share a pretty cool experience I had yesterday. a friend of mine and I went storm chasing up in southwest and southcentral minnesota and sure enough saw our very first tornado ever. here's a recap w/ some videos [AVI format]
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So i'm going to take you through the day, 29 June 2005. Quite possibly one of the coolest days of the summer. I didn't have to work this morning, or this afternoon. and the guy i was workin' for in meteorology said that anything that came in this afternoon, he could do - so i had the day off to storm chase [which he dubbed as a "legitimate reason to miss work"].
So Kari and I left Ames, IA around 2:30pm. there was a 15% chance of tornadoes in western Minnesota/northwestern Iowa [as well as eastern minnesota].
So we take off, heading north on I-35. We stop in Mason City /Clear Lake, IA and recheck the radar. all of southern minnesota is now under 15% chance of tornadoes. hell yes!
We start heading west towards where the storms were currently at - a tornado warning was being issued for a county in southwestern minneota. so we head west and north / zigzagging through some county roads. We see a huge supercell , but passed it up - something much more fierce was happening further west.
Then we hear about what's going on in Windom, MN. TORNADO WARNING VIDEO tornado warning. tornado touchdown. another tornado touchdown. another tornado touchdown. we gotta get to Windom!!! So we're heading straight west - straight for Windom. the storms are moving Northeast. we found an awesome radio station that had minute by minute reports of everything that was going on.
We get to Windom a little too late. the storms were already moving NE out of town , heading parallel to Route 60 East/Northeast. So we follow 60. We were on the southern edge of the supercell - and everything the radio said was that we were in the highest region for tornadic developement. score.
We're heading northeast on Route 60 . Hearing tornado warning for every county we enter. supercell movement was going through Bingham Lake, Mountain Lake, St. James. moving so parallel to the road we were on. perfect. storm chasers are everywhere. here's a video of that: WATONWAN COUNTY WARNING
Then I look out the driver's window, and saw a slight little sliver coming out of the sky. "KARI OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT!?" i screamed out. i pulled over my truck, slammed on the emergency blinkers and hopped out. The sliver got further down and further down. then it happened. TOUCHDOWN.
SCORE!!!!
Sure enough, it was a little F0/F1 tornado that was heading eastward towards Madelia in Watonwan County. We saw it completely start, touchdown, and then spin off away and disappate.
And of course i never leave my home w/out my handy dandy Powershot - so here it is: my videos.
Tornado coming out of the sky - pardon my french in this one, but it was my first tornado ever - you can understand my excitement. i was beginning to cry at this moment. so awesome.
Tornado in center of movie . A little hard to see - it was just a sliver in the middle of the video. but you can make it out if you look hard.
Zoom in of Tornado much better view of Tornado. it was zoomed in , so you can fully make it out. such an amazing site.
The twister disappated and we headed onward - following the supercell. We later saw another funnel cloud that didn't quite touch base on the other side of Madelia. Continued on. supercell movement was same - NE as was route 60.
Then we hit Mankota [sp?] and headed north towards St. Peters. by this time the terrain was not in our favor - too many trees/hills/valleys. and it was getting dark out [around 845pm] or so. headed up to st. peter but saw nothing. just a lot of lightning and darkness. damn.
Headed back south to Mankota and then decided to call it a day. it was pitch black by this time - too dangerous and almost pointless to chase due to lack of visibility. stopped at subway for dinner and headed eastward on Route 14. Now this got interesting.
Just outside of Waseca, MN we hit the brunt of the supercell. It was so hard to see - so i was only doing about 40 miles an hour or less[honestly i probably should have gotten off the road because i couldn't see ]. and was this was on a stretch of road for like 20 miles or so. It was seriously like driving through a hurricane. actually, this seemed more severe than when TS Bonnie came through when i was at FT last summer. Here's a video of that: hail. rain. winds 50mph. darkness. extreme lightning.
We finally get to I-35. gas break. filled up and headed south back towards Ames. We made it back to Ames around 1:15 AM or so. i think i put around 500 miles on my truck [someone's due for an oil change already!!] and we were on the road for around 10 hours or so. good damn times.
Here's a picture of the route we went. The Big RED X is where we saw the tornado, and the littler X is where we saw the funnel cloud. the blue streak is where we were in the rain/hail shaft of the supercell.
There were 10 reported tornadoes in minnesota [preliminary] today. one of which was just north of st peter , another just east of clear lake [both of which we missed because we changed directions. oh well]. but all in all today was a success. it was so damn awesome. just amazing. my first tornado. damn skippy what a good day!! |
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