Long Distance Love Affair

With severe weather forecasts for Wednesday, June 3, 2020 being predicted in extreme northern Iowa only, I paid only mild attention to radar throughout the day. Instead, I spent a large portion of the day doing yard work, and was quite tired by its end. A dinner meal, then welcomed relaxation on the couch to watch TV. Very quickly I began to get sleepy and was near the nodding off point when I received a text message from friend Mike Graber (W0WWX) at 6:49 pm. Mike posted a picture of an absolutely gorgeous storm cell that had popped up in the Quad Cities area. This got me off the couch! I took a quick walk down the block for a look toward the southeast to see if it was viewable from my position. Through a thicket of trees I could only make out an enticing top layer of clouds, so back to the house and into my car. Driving a short distance east on Boyson Road in Marion, Iowa, I neared a more open sky area of the Bowman Meadows housing development. As I did so, I almost gasped at the sight of the beautiful spreading anvil and vigorous updraft of the distant storm that now came into view, and quickly found a place to stop for photography. Above is a panorama from Alburnett Road in the housing development looking southeast at 7:03 pm CDT. The storm was about 55 miles distant, with its most intense area being about 6 miles southeast of Durant, Iowa. The distance from edge-to-edge of the anvil in the image was about 50 miles.

7:03 pm. Zoomed-in capture of the updraft area. Note the rippled edges of the anvil.

Weather.us base velocity and echo top captures for 7:05 pm. Rotation (circled area, left panel) was weak in the most intense area, but cloud tops there reached over 55,000 feet (right).

An overshooting top peeks above the storm's anvil (upper right) in this capture from 7:05 pm. This was the highest area of echo top altitude.

7:09 pm. Panorama image of the storm from Alburnett Road and Bowstring Drive in Marion. This isolated storm began to form west of Davenport around 3:35 pm, and was severe-warned from 7:10-7:55 pm. For the most part, the cell remained in the same general area, actually performing a slow retrograde motion to the south and then southwest. It finally dissolved around 10:45 pm, northwest of Burlington, Iowa.

Close-up of anvil and updraft at 7:14 pm. After 8:30 pm with growing darkness, the anvil took on a pinkish hue and was laced with lightning. Nikon D7200 DSLR camera.

Radar image corresponding to 7:25 pm. This image clearly shows the isolated nature of the storm. My viewing position is indicated by the target icon.

A Radarscope frame capture for 7:37 pm. I was enthralled by the structure of this beautiful storm and would have been very disappointed and frustrated had I not been forewarned of its presence and fallen asleep and missed it!