Severe Weather Was Imminent

The underside of an anvil cloud approaches Cedar Rapids, Iowa as seen from Blairs Ferry Road NE, just west of C Avenue, heralding the approach of severe weather. This westward looking image, taken around 6:30 PM, Sunday, April 3, 2011, was one the first few shots taken on a storm chase. Our chase route took us south and east through the towns of Mount Vernon and Stanwood, north through Olin, Wyoming and Cascade, then south through Monticello and Anamosa before returning home. The experience produced nothing tornadic with only pea size hail, but other areas of Eastern Iowa reported baseball size hail, and funnel clouds near the Iowa City area. Cedar Rapids set a record high temperature of 80 degrees on this day, which helped fuel the thunderstorms that began firing up around 6:00 PM in a diagonal line from northeast of Sigourney to west of Monticello. Less than 12 hours later, temperatures had dropped some 40 degrees in Cedar Rapids, the result of the cold front having passed through.