My 2018 Severe Weather Season In Review

Severe weather season for 2019 is approaching fast and I thought I would create a posting today showing my significant intercepts from last year. Some of the following images are new to Sky & Weather Photography, having been pulled out as surplus from my Adobe Lightroom library. One event last season produced a tornado that I was witness to, and two other tornadic events occurred well past seasonal prime time (September 3 and October 9). All images were captured with my Nikon D7200 DLSR camera and each event includes a base reflectivity and base velocity radar image.

Wednesday, May 2, 2018. Severe weather got underway in southeastern Iowa. Monitoring radar,
I saw a storm cell go tornado-warned, and I set out to catch it from my home in Cedar Rapids. It was going to be close, but I passed just east and south of it on US Highway 218 at Hills, Iowa in Johnson County. My spotting location was a Casey's General Store in Hills. Above, the camera looks west at the approaching and intensifying tornadic cell at 7:46 pm CDT.

7:51 pm. The storm, accompanied by CG lightning, was tracking northeast, bringing it just to my north. As it passed to my north, high winds, dime-to-penny size hail fell and heavy rain occurred. This was conveyed to the National Weather Service.

Radar capture.

Friday, May 25, 2018. This tornado-warned cell was building to the north of Marshalltown, Iowa that evening. I raced west on US Highway 30 and positioned myself behind the Youngville Cafe, .1-mile east of US Highway 218 in Benton County. The above image was captured at 7:31 pm CDT. The most intense part of the storm, featuring a wall cloud and an inflow tail, was located about 45 miles distant, near the Marshalltown airport.

Panorama capture of the storm cell at 7:47 pm. My location now was 21st Avenue (County Road V66), just north of US Highway 30 and about 3 miles south of Van Horne, Iowa in Benton County. Shortly after this image capture, the tornado warning was lifted from the storm.

Radar capture.

Wednesday, June 6, 2018. Seeing this severe storm cell form to my west, I had ample time to get south via Interstate 380 and set up shop at the UICCU facility in North Liberty, Iowa. The storm would stay to my west and north, however, but I captured striking striation features, such as shown in the image above, captured at 5:45 pm CDT. At about this time the most intense part of the storm was located about 40 miles distant, near the town of Elberon in Tama County.

Radar capture.

This tornado-warned storm cell on Saturday, June 9, 2018 preempted a family bonfire outing near Shueyville, Iowa in Johnson County. The above image looks southwest at the approaching storm at 8:36 pm CDT. The most intense part of the storm was located about 15 miles distant--just west of Norway, Iowa in southern Benton County.

Camera looks northwest from the same location at 9:12 pm. The storm has gone tornado-warned and local sirens were sounding. Note the wall cloud being fed by an inflow tail cloud.

Radar capture.

Wednesday, June 20, 2018. This isolated storm cell had apparently not attracted much attention, judging by the lack of amateur radio traffic. The image above, looking southeast from Oliver Court, just south of Boyson Road and just west of Alburnett Road in Marion, Iowa, was captured at 3:48 pm CDT. It featured a very low and slowly rotating cloud base and was located about 7-8 miles distant, just east of Bertram, Iowa.

3:52 pm. The rotation produced this ragged funnel.

3:53 pm (above) and 3:54 pm (below). Closeups of the funnel.

Radar capture.

Thursday, July 19, 2018. Three afternoon severe storms cells began lining up in central Iowa, each moving east. My first thought was to intercept the southern cell, which was a "tail-end Charlie," and was the largest and moving in the general direction of Iowa City. On my way south on Interstate 380 my instincts instead changed to travel west on US Highway 30 and target that storm, which appeared to be intensifying at that very moment. So with only minutes to spare, I chose the Highway 30 option. With each mile west, the cell loomed larger in the distance, and I could tell this wasn't going to be an ordinary storm. In southeastern Tama County my weather radio began blaring ominous news of "a tornado emergency" and "a deadly tornado on the ground in Marshalltown (Iowa)." Not wanting to get embroiled in that situation and wanting to find an optimum location to spot the storm as it continued east, I chose Highway V18 at 320th Street just north of US Highway 30 in southeastern Tama County. My open, 360-degree view of sky was located about 1.3 miles south of Vining, Iowa and about 26 miles east of the beleaguered town of Marshalltown, where an EF3 tornado was indeed on the ground. The panorama image above looks northwest at 4:51 pm CDT at that location.

Around 5:20 pm a bowl lowering was passing over my location and heavy rain began to fall, so because of these issues in visibility I decided to jump back into the car and head back east on Highway 30. While doing so, I captured the images (above and below) of the tail-end of this storm seen along 30 at 5:35 and 5:36 pm. Camera looks northeast.

Radar capture.

Monday, September 3, 2018. Labor Day. Thinking football, not severe weather. But by late afternoon an isolated storm cell was intensifying in eastern Benton County and western Linn County and suddenly became tornado-warned! My spotting plan was to take Highway 13 north of Marion, Iowa to an intercept point east of the storm. Just south of Central City I chose the west option of Central City Road (County Road E16) and found a suitable spot at the intersection of Sutton Road, about 2.5 miles southwest of Central City. Despite a dangerous barrage of CG lightning,  I captured this image of the approaching tornadic storm cell to my southwest at 5:17 pm CDT. The magnificent structure featured a wall cloud and a vigorous inflow tail cloud, rotating like a wheel and feeding into the storm at its low cloud base.

The storm was passing to my south so I quickly drove across Central City Road on Sutton Road for a short distance of .2-mile and a better view. A condensation funnel appeared, began lowering, and finally touched ground to my south as I captured this image at 5:43 pm CDT. The tornado, located only about .6-mile from my location, was on the ground for less than 30 seconds and moved right-to-left in this picture. I reported the tornado to the NWS, and within 15 minutes the storm began losing its intensity and I opted to go home instead of continuing to follow it.

Radar capture.

October 9, 2018. Really not expecting tornadic weather this month, but got some anyway. Picked up my spotting partner in Cedar Rapids as a tornado-warned cell formed to our west. We chose the US Highway 30 option and soon witnessed an impressive wall cloud to our southwest, as seen in the background of this image at 3:45 pm CDT. The building in the foreground is Van Horn Ford of Newhall, Iowa.

3:48 pm. Stopping briefly at this location to capture images and make a wall cloud report to the NWS in the Quad Cities. Image looks southwest from US Highway 30 at 27th Avenue in Benton County, Iowa.

Following 27th Avenue (W14) north, we pulled over to our next spotting position alongside the highway about .6-mile south of 67th Street in Benton County. The tornadic storm cell had passed over us, tracking to the northeast. As it did, brief backlit sunshine beautifully contrasted and illuminated the soybean fields and the massive storm with its angled funnel cloud in this capture at 4:19 pm.

A stop at Van Horn Ford for more spotting as another wall cloud approached. The above panorama, captured at 5:12 pm, shows the large wall cloud moving right-to-left in the image and passing to our east.

5:24 pm. Tornado Emergency Alert on my cell phone, showing the seriousness of the situation.

Radar capture.

Thanks for viewing!