HOME TRIPS TUTORIALS GEAR STOCK GIFS

June 11, 2004 North Central Iowa Tornadoes

I got to the show late but saw the whole life cycle of this tornado, ne of Webb Iowa. I walked the dogs before leaving for this chase. To do this I drive to my parent's house and take them up on a hill for about 20 minutes. When I was doing it it did cross my mind that it would suck to be late for something. Well I miss one of the best tornadoes of 2004, if not the best. I didn't miss it by much and some have said this is the end of of it. I'm confused on this tornado as I don't know if I have seen it on the other videos I have from this day. The other 4 videos I have show the big Webb IA tornado and then jump to this next one. This one started sort of odd as it was this nub sticking out of the backside of the updraft. Then it came down for a couple minutes. I suppose it is possible that nub was the end of the big Webb IA tornado and then it came back down for a couple minutes. I don't know, I guess I don't get why this isn't on their videos but the next one is.

It was quickly followed by this tornado. To stay east of the storm I opted to fly east and then north around a lake in the area. It puts down this tornado as I do this. I'm a bit further east than I would have liked to be but I was sure ready for later tornadoes!

The above tornado ropes out pretty quickly and then this touches down just north of where the other was. It was only on the ground for about 10 seconds. The storm was now battling some cold air in the area. This would be the last tornado I see from this storm. It had strong rotation several times but I didn't see anything touch down, and I was always really close to the action then.

I couldn't help myself. The TIV(Tornado Intercept Vehicle) was doing 20mph as this meso passed just to the ne of us. I could tell it was east of the highway and wondered why exactly it was I needed to pass the tornado intercept vehicle. It was funny at the time. You can't help but feel something is wrong when passing the TIV.

After getting pulled over for no reason(recent robberies I guess) I saw this form wsw of Ft. Dodge.

It lasted for about 5-10 minutes. This formed in a very high based, linear mess.

Things did not look like they were going to produce but after that seeing that little tornado I decided to hang around. What followed next was rather cool. In the middle of this weak line this meso spun up, and rather hard. I'm now looking nw at this, from a location a few miles south of Ft. Dodge.

Debris with no visible funnel yet.

I had my gps on, a great grid of gravel roads and thought hmmm, I should get closer. I moved east to stay with it. I shoot the rest about 1/2 mile to its south. This was due south of Ft. Dodge.

Crazy whipping multiple vorticies.

It was not a violent tornado but for sure a strong one. It tore up something, not sure what. I believe this object that goes around the west side here was the roof of some farm out building.

It happens in the very bottom left edge of the tornado, about here, but it is too hard to make it show up on vid caps. I think it is that dark spot near the ground in this one.




This below was something I've surely never seen before in person. I saw it on twister though, sorry, but serious! The condensation closer to the ground took place in a rather cool fashion. There were two vorticies going around each other. I think at a brief point it split to 3 of them and quickly combined into the one. Actually at one moment there may have been around 5 of them. Here are 3 images from video changed to black and white to get rid of color issues with adjusting the levels. The first two images have two vorticies. The last image is when it combined and stayed in the one.

Storm Tutorial - Understanding Storms
Photography Tutorial - Camera Settings Through Processing
Sky Tracking
Lens Reviews
Stock Photography
Home Contact About Weather Data Space Data Affiliate Disclosure