August 17, 2001 Onawa Iowa Supercell

This chase day started within seconds of getting off work at 5:30. I joked with a fellow chaser the night before that he was crazy to think we'd have enough moisture for anything fun. I'm glad I made no sort of bets on this.

An isolated supercell had been in progress west of Soiux City from around 4:00. I got home, turned on the puter and some non-chaser friends of mine called saying they were in Soiux City and this storm was producing tornadoes up there. I saw the tornado warning and flew up I-29. This storm looked very isolated, but the updraft was very weak in apperance. It conitinued to develop westard as it dropped sse. It produced quite a few very weak funnels. This is a pic of one funnel as I leave this storm. This storm appeared starved and just a bit too far west of the deeper moisture. I'm now wondering if this is the storm that puts down a nice tornado...LOL!

Base of new storm developing ne of Onawa IA sometime around 7:00.

A lowering formed rather quickly and had nice upward motions on its right side.

The area to the east stayed firm and had conveyor belt action from right to left going up into the updraft.

In this pic you can see the base and lowering on the far left. Past that base and further right you can see a bit of a beaver tail stretching east.

As the rfd cuts south you could see these clouds moving pretty quickly around the structure.

I'm in the same spot during all of this. I thought it was going to tornado very close to me here.

The rfd is cutting in really hard now and making for quite the sight.

Very low and rather rounded lower portion of the storm.

I get out and use the tripod to capture this motion. She was cranking fairly hard at this point. I still can't believe it didn't want to produce a tornado.

You can't really see it in this pic, but directly under the dark center portion debris(dust) gets kicked straight up and then blows quickly south. It's kind of interesting how it went straight up.

She's still rotating....and still not producing a tornado. Oh well I couldn't really care less(sort of). The sunlight on it now really added to its beauty.

Now I tear after it as it's moving sse. I'm on a se highway out of Onawa.

What a storm, and what a rounded updraft.

I never managed to get se of it. The damn road went right into the now wrapped back portion of this storm. I tried and tried, but the hail was getting the best of me. I'm pretty sure there were a couple tennis balls thrown in this mess. Whatever hit my windshield at one point hit as hard as one could without cracking it. That is the one that made me stop. I drive a leased vehicle and my deductible is $500 right now. If my deductible was $100 I'd have plowed on through. Speaking of this, I've yet to go check out my truck. (UPDATE) Checked truck...it's now very dented.

Poor cows. Well I did and would pic up a stray pup caught out in a very nasty storm

(7-16-01)

. I was not picking up a cow....lol. I followed the idea of the many others on this road by pulling under some trees. I thought some of these people had wrecked by the way they had pulled off onto the "shoulder". If I had done what they did I'm certain I'd have been stuck.

I decide to head west in hopes of getting south on a better road. Was not going to happen. The sky in this town(Soldier, IA I belive) was unreal. Not this pic here. My vid cam just does not capture colors well. The strangest orange sky I've seen.

I flew west trying to get out of all the cloud debris so that I could view these mammatus. I barely made it. I set up the tri-pod and shoot video.

My one regret is not setting up tri-pod again even further west. I taped it from my window as I drove and it sucks. What a massive sweet storm it was. The lightning zits were very nice too.