A Day (Or Night) To Remember!

A day of SPC moderate risk for western Iowa provided me with my first tornado(es) ever witnessed on the ground. My meteorologist son and I agreed to give the chase potential a try and left Cedar Rapids around 11:30 AM bound for Ames, to meet up with six meteorology students at Iowa State University. After a brief discussion in Ames as to our target destination for the day, the group agreed on Avoca, Iowa, about 30 miles northeast of Council Bluffs. Some temperatures and dew points in western Iowa read 81/73. Wind shear was created from strong surface-level winds blowing from the southeast and mid-level winds from the WSW. This primed the evening for severe weather. Our setup location eventually changed to Minden, Iowa and later around 4:30 PM our two-car chase team headed west then north on Interstate 29, where a large supercell structure began to form around 5:15 PM just west of the Missouri River. We drove through an undisturbed Mapleton, Iowa over a half hour later, then circled back when tornadic conditions began to show on radar in that area. Our group was some seven miles southeast of town when we witnessed the scene shown above, around 7:24 PM. 60% of the town experienced damage from the EF3 rated twister. Remarkably and thankfully, there were no fatalities. Nighttime and darkness did not suppress the power of this storm as we witnessed at least nine more tornadoes--including several wedges--glimpsed only during brief flashes of lightning. Incessant and vivid cloud-to-cloud lightning accompanied the system. We finally broke off our chase just after 10:00 PM, with tornado formation still occurring at that time. We did not return home to Cedar Rapids until 1:45 AM, over 14 hours from our original departure. The tiring but exhilarating experience was definitely once-in-a-lifetime for me!