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 in Marion, Iowa, about 15 miles to the south 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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