Rain, Rain

An intense cell in the image above, part of an overall tornado-warned system approaches my position at 4:13 pm CDT, Thursday, April 9, 2015. Moments later, a heavy downpour occurred here, including penny size hail. The image looks southwest from 175th Street, about a tenth-mile east of US Highway 218 in Washington County, Iowa. The cell passed directly over me, and was a trailing segment of a much larger and intense cell several miles to the northwest. That cell produced half-dollar size hail.

This image looks directly west from the same position as the top photograph and shows the area at 4:30 PM, less than ten minutes after hail fell here. The intersection with US Highway 218 can be seen in the distance. The location is about 5.6 miles southeast of Riverside, Iowa.

The radar image above corresponds to the timing of the very top image. My spotter's position is indicated by a white dot. The circled area is the approaching storm cell. The arrow shows the system's movement. The lavender area to my north clearly shows the more intense hail core. Nikon D5000 DSLR.