Heading For Trouble

An isolated severe storm cell looms in the distance as I headed north along Highway 13 just north of Marion, Iowa and approaching the intersection of County Home Road around 7:04 PM, Wednesday, June 26, 2013. I wasn't trying to intercept the storm (it was 85 miles away I later discovered) but to get closer to more effectively photograph it. I would eventually stop at the town of Coggon, about 13.5 miles from this position. The cumulonimbus sported an overshooting top, attesting to its strong updraft condition. The isolated storm was the only one for hundreds of miles and was located in Allamakee County, Iowa, along the Minnesota border.

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Lone Cumulonimbus From Coggon

This was the scene looking northeast from the Go America Phillips 66 gas station at Coggon, Iowa in northern Linn County around 7:30 PM, Wednesday, June 26, 2013. The large cumulonimbus cloud, part of a very isolated storm cell, was located about 85 miles away in Allamakee County (bordering Minnesota). From the perspective of the photos, the storm was moving from upper left to lower right. In extreme foreground (left-to-right) is 6th Avenue, behind the speed limit sign is 8th Street and at far right is Highway 13. Below is a radar screen capture of this moment.

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Storm Cell With No Competition

In an otherwise benign sky on Wednesday evening, June 26, 2013 I was surprised to see a blossoming thunderhead far off into the distance and sporting a overshooting top. I was on the road with my camera by 6:45 PM and headed north on Highway 13 north and east of Marion, Iowa. Appearing local, I would later discover the storm cell was actually about 85 miles from my eventual spotting position near the northern Linn County town of Coggon. Both of the upper images were shot around 7:19 PM and look north from Heatons Valley Road, just east of Highway 13 and about 2.25 miles south of Coggon. The overshooting top, a strong updraft feature resembling a small dome, can be seen at upper left on the structure. At this moment it was rising at an altitude of 50-55,000 feet. The bottom image is a radar screen capture corresponding to the photos. It shows the storm's location in extreme northeast Iowa (Allamakee County), near the Minnesota border.

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Distant But Dangerous

Seemingly harmless hidden inside a small opening in more local cloud cover, a line of cumulus 65 miles to the west (top image) is seen from Progress Drive in Hiawatha, Iowa around 1:08 PM, Monday, June 24, 2013. Two hours later this location was under a tornado warning from the system, though the nearest confirmed sighting was about 25 miles to the southeast, near Solon. The storm also dropped tremendous amounts of rain. The bottom image is a comparable radar image capture of this moment. The arrow shows the track of the distant cumulus, at this time in Marshall County.

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Dark Curtain Coming Down

The leading edge of a strong gust front is shown arriving near the Progress Drive Transamerica building in Hiawatha, Iowa. These three images range from 9:20-9:22 AM, Friday, June 21, 2013.
The first and third images look NE, the second looks north. The gust front brought torrents of rain and turned the morning sky black as night.

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Early Rising Storms

I was vaulted out of bed early Saturday morning, June 22, 2013 by the alarm of my weather radio. As I took up a spotter position for the incoming severe weather at Noelridge Christian Church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, these were some of the images I captured. At top, low hanging clouds drift toward the right just before 7:00 AM. In the distance is Pin Tail Drive NE and in the foreground is 74th Street NE. In the second and third images, an intense area of the storm is shown moving away to the east around 7:15 AM with C Avenue NE in the background. The storm system, of which these images were part of, stretched from Iowa County in Iowa upward to southwest Wisconsin.

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Inky Black Gust Front

I found myself watching an incoming storm from work on Friday morning, June 21, 2013 without my regular camera on hand, being caught unaware of the weather potential approaching from the northwest. I therefore resorted to using my cell phone's panoramic camera feature to capture these images of a menacing looking shelf cloud on the leading edge of a gust front. The top image was captured at 9:04 AM, the bottom at 9:19 AM. The building at left in both images is the Sport Zone, located on North 18th Street in Hiawatha, Iowa. As the storm blew through, it turned the sky inky black and dropped copious amounts of rain.

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Under Their Watchful Eye

In the top image members of the Manchester (Iowa) Fire Department prepare to follow a scrappy lowering from under a wall cloud as seen from 255th Street in Delaware County around 5:36 PM, Wednesday, June 12, 2013. This position was about a quarter mile east of Highway 13, between the towns of Manchester and Ryan. The vehicles head off into the distance toward the east in the middle image. I watched for a few minutes longer before getting into my car and heading for home. The bottom set of circles are radar screen captures showing the captured tornadic cell (circled) and my position (blue star) in relation to it. The shaded county is Delaware County and the bottom middle image compares to the time of the two images above.

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Postcards From A PDS Day

Action such as seen above was not out of the question for NE Iowa on Wednesday, June 12, 2013. A rare Particularly Dangerous Situation (PDS) advisory had been issued on this day and included this area. I donned my "lucky" Chicago Cubs t-shirt (that had served me so well during a tornado outbreak in Western Iowa on April 9, 2011) and headed north from Cedar Rapids on Highway 13 just after 4:00 PM. I witnessed a wall cloud approaching before 5:15 PM and followed it to this position (above) while it was leaving. These funnel cloud images look east along 255th Street, about a quarter-mile east of Highway 13 in Delaware County. Time for the three images are (from top-to-bottom): 5:27 PM, 5:29 PM and 5:31 PM.

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Curtains Call

Curtains of rain fall south and west of a wall cloud that passed several minutes before. The wall cloud moved right-to-left in this image, which looks south. The location is 255th Street, a quarter-mile east of Highway 13 in Delaware County, Iowa, between the towns of Ryan and Manchester. 5:28 PM, Wednesday, June 12, 2013. I encountered no hail during this storm chase and did not perceive the wall cloud's accompanying funnel ever touching ground.

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Cauliflower Cumulus

On my return drive from my Delaware County Iowa storm chase of Wednesday, June 12, 2013, a final meteorological object caused me to grab my camera and capture these images of a small but beautiful cauliflower-like cumulus cell illuminated by the sun. My position at this moment (5:48 PM) was about 3.5 miles north of Ryan, Iowa--located in SW Delaware County. The cell was located about 35 miles to the SSE in northern Cedar County. Yes, I shot these images from my car window as I was driving!

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Coggon Clouds

A partly sunny afternoon began to darken with gathering cumulus clouds as I neared the north Linn County Iowa town of Coggon around 4:40 PM, Wednesday, June 12, 2013. The cumulus tower seen above in both images--shot from my car window along Highway 13-- was billowing upward around 50,000 feet and was part of an approaching tornadic storm cell to the northwest. The top image was located about one mile south of Coggon, the bottom was located at 3rd Street South (seen at lower right) in town.

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Short Range Storm Chase

I had been waiting for storms to initiate in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa area since around 3:30 PM on Wednesday, June 12, 2013. Storm cells--some tornado warned--were indeed popping up in northeast Iowa and southwest Wisconsin but all were staying north. Around 4:15 PM I finally decided that I would miss out on the action unless I headed north (the SPC had issued a PDS warning for NE Iowa, SW Wisconsin and northern Illinois). As I continually consulted my PYKL3 radar app from my cell phone I formulated my target as Manchester, Iowa in Delaware County. About four miles south of Manchester on Highway 13, I could see what appeared to be a forming wall cloud at my 11:00 o'clock position. The top two images show my spotter position on 255th Street (County Highway D34), just west of Highway 13. The top image shows a tail cloud feeding into the wall cloud at 5:00 PM, and the middle image shows the wall cloud 15 minutes later. The bottom image illustrates a GOES satellite image of cloud tops above the wall cloud (blue ring) and my position (red dot).

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Funnel Cloud Drifts Overhead

A funnel began to lower as a wall cloud passed over my position on 255th Street (County Highway D54), just west of Highway 13 in Delaware County, Iowa on Wednesday evening, June 12, 2013. The top image shows that position around 5:19 PM. Shortly thereafter the winds began to get strong, prompting me to move a quarter mile west to get out of "Harm's Way." The second and third images look NE after I had achieved a "safer" position on a field drive along 255th Street. Image two was captured at 5:21 PM, image three at 5:24 PM. Highway 13 is seen in the distance. The funnel was moving quickly away to the east. This location was about 4.5 miles north of the town of Ryan and about 4 miles south of Manchester, Iowa. This was the northern-most limit of my storm chase.

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Delaware County Iowa Wall Cloud

A look east from 255th Street, about a quarter mile east of Highway 13 in Delaware County, Iowa. This location is about 4.5 miles north of the town of Ryan and about 4 miles south of the town of Manchester. These images were taken around 5:33 PM, Wednesday, June 12, 2013. Seeing storm cells moving east on radar from north of Cedar Rapids after 4:00 PM, and deciding none were going to fire up in the local vicinity, I headed north around 4:15 PM. At the intersection of Highway 13 and 255th Street I could see the makings of a wall cloud to my 11:00 o'clock position, where I pulled off. The structure crossed Highway 13 around 5:20 PM and these images show it moving away to the east. In the second of the two images above, members of the Manchester Fire Department observe the cloud before moving on to follow it. This wall cloud did not produce a tornado but gave every indication that it might. 18 reports of tornadoes came from northeast Iowa this evening where a very rare "Particularly Dangerous Situation" (PDS) alert was issued from the SPC (below).

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Forest Fire?

No, it wasn't burning treetops but actually highly illuminated clouds from the rising sun behind them. This image looks east from Brentwood Drive NE in Cedar Rapids, Iowa around 5:30 AM, Tuesday, June 11, 2013.

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Bonfire Pall Lifts Skyward

Unfettered by city burn bans, smoke from a large bonfire lifts into the evening sky on the property of my sister and brother-in-law in rural Shueyville, Iowa on the evening of Saturday, June 8, 2013. The lighting of the bonfire is an annual event for friends and family here. These images were captured around 8:55 PM. Wet grounds from a cool and damp year helped prevent the threat of stray embers igniting nearby grass.

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Relay For Life Wind Turbine

The sun sets behind the walking trail at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa during the 2013 Relay For Life of Linn County cancer walk event. At right is a wind turbine on the Kirkwood campus. 8:14 PM, Friday, June 7, 2013. The walking trail is .59-mile in length. Dotting the trail are luminaria bags which were all lit an hour later.

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Rainy Times Ahead

Looking somewhat ominous and turning out to be, the dark cloud in front of us produced plenty of rain and lightning as we traveled eastbound on Interstate 80. We were on a return trip to Cedar Rapids from Des Moines for the Memorial Day weekend. The heavy rains contributed to flooding in many places from the already saturated ground in Iowa. The top image shows our location 1.5 miles west of Brooklyn around 6:28 PM, Sunday, May 26, 2013. The bottom image shows a radar screen capture of the same spot and time.

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Beautiful Sunset Follows Stormy Evening

These images of the northwest sky were captured around 8:15 PM on Tuesday, May 28, 2013 from the grounds at Noelridge Christian Church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Severe weather to the south of town produced magnificent mammatus formations here. In these photos, the mammatus are beginning to lose their "pouchy" shape as the storm passes, but have been transformed into a field of rich color by the setting sun.

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Dodging A Bullet

With river level predictions at 21 feet for the next 24 hours on the Cedar River in downtown Cedar Rapids on Saturday, June 1, 2013 from heavy and persistent rainfall, worries were for more of the same chaos and destruction created by the recent flood of 2008. As it turned out, the river rose to a level only slightly higher than shown in the images above, which at the moment of capture was around 18 feet. Both photos look southeast from the First Avenue bridge. The top image pictures the Second Avenue bridge in the background with the Alliant Tower at left. A right foreground is a section of the river wall around Veterans Memorial Building on May's Island. The bottom image shows a closeup of a painted river level marker below Vets Memorial Building. The peak level of 18.23 feet the next day would rank fourth all time in the history of Cedar Rapids.

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Gathering Gloom

The sky to the northwest was darkening just after 5:00 PM, on Tuesday, May 28, 2013 as seen above from the Four Corners BP truck stop at the Highway 218 Exit 66 just east of Ainsworth, Iowa. Also shown above is a corresponding radar capture of this moment with the location and direction of sight included. This was the furthest extent of my storm  "chase" which originated from Cedar Rapids, 50 miles to the north. This system would in less than a half-hour turn severe. 

The image shown just above looks southwest on my return drive north. It looks over Menard's along Highway 218 just north of the Highway 1 intersection around 5:52 PM at the edge of the storm.

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Dandy 'draft

Severe weather moved ENE from Central Iowa on the afternoon and evening of Wednesday, May 29, 2013 but just missed the Cedar Rapids and passed just west of the city. It was however, a great vantage point to view this isolated storm cell billow to life. Cloud tops rose to around 50,000 feet in minutes. The top two images show the cell behind White Ivy Place NE around 5:10 PM as seen from Noelridge Christian Church. Some lower level pileus  (saucer shaped areas) indicated the strong updraft of the cell. The bottom image is a corresponding radar screen capture of this moment, with the base reflectivity at left and echo tops at right.

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