Vantage Point of Hope

The storm chase team of Ryan Alliss, Nick Carletta, Bryce Link, Ethan Milius, Tristan Morath, Tyler Roney, Sam Schreier and yours truly observe a wall cloud from Hope Avenue (right) just north of Highway 175 (330th Street, toward foreground), about two miles east of Odebolt, Iowa. The time and date was 8:38 PM, Saturday, April 9, 2011. The clump of trees in the distant background which appears to be directly under the wall cloud (but was in fact much closer) is a farmstead about .6 mile NW of our location. The wall cloud was continuously dropping and retracting a tornado funnel as it moved in a northeasterly direction. This is a video frame capture whose image was made visible by a flash of lightning. Carletta, Link, Milius, Morath, Roney and Schreier were all Iowa State University meteorology students. Ryan Alliss had received his meteorology degree from the school the previous December.