Cellular Coverage

The race to get ahead of this severe-warned storm cell, rumbling eastward toward Washington County, Iowa on the evening of Saturday, June 20, 2015, was won when my daughter and I arrived at our spotting location objective, having left earlier from Cedar Rapids. The image above looks west from US Highway 218, just north of the Washington, Iowa exit (66) at 5:24 pm CDT. The core of the storm cell was still some 70 miles distant at this moment, the outer edge of the anvil, about 35 miles.

This image, captured one minute later, looks north from the U-shaped US Highway 218/Highway 92 interchange at Ainsworth, Iowa. A segment of the storm system--which extended south from Marion County to north in Benton County--is seen here. In the foreground is the Ainsworth Four Corners Truck Stop and Highway 92.

By 5:34 pm the edge of the southern storm cell was creeping into view looking southwest along Yucca Avenue, about .25-mile south of Highway 92 and just a little over a mile east of the 218/92 interchange. That cell would produce tornadic spinups near the Mount Pleasant, Iowa area less than two hours later. Nikon D5000 DSLR camera.

Above is a radar screen capture for 5:30 pm. Our position at this moment is marked by a white star.

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Revisiting June 20, 2015

Like a warning display from above, copious amounts of mammatus clouds appeared in the skies
over southeast Iowa on the evening of Saturday, June 20, 2015. That warning was realized as one
hour after the image above was captured at 6:20 pm CDT, severe weather passed through the area, including small and short duration tornadic spin ups. This image looks northeast from 260th Street,
about .1-mile north of US Highway 34 and about 1.3-mile west of the town of New London in Henry
County. The radar capture from this moment (below) shows our position (white star) and an arrow pointing to the edge of the approaching anvil containing the view seen above.

Add a little updraft and a low-base lowering in this image (below), captured at 6:29 pm, looking west. The tall and scrappy foreground feature drifted harmlessly to our north (right). Larger mammatus can be seen in the background at upper right.

More mammatus (image below) looking south at 6:41 pm. In the background is US Highway 34, where our repositioning a few miles west gave us a ringside seat to the storm's main event around
7:20 pm.

Some mammatus began forming in Eastern Iowa as early as 8:30 am on this day. Nikon D5000 DSLR camera.

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Parting of Waves

This cirrus cloud, which resembled a wide contrail, extended from the western horizon all the way
to the eastern horizon on Saturday evening, February 20, 2016. Cleaving into the cirrus cloud at 5:12 pm CST was a clear wedge of sky. The image looks toward the setting sun over Bowman Woods Park in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Actual sunset time was 5:45 pm. Nikon D5000 DSLR camera.

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