Iowa November Bust

Chase Recap:

Hail Mary

Late season hail mary chase is the best way to describe November 11th. A very strong system ejecting out to the mid plains above some meager moisture and marginal instability should have been my first clues to skip, but nonetheless logistics worked out and I headed out Tuesday after work for a hotel in Leavenworth, KS.

Chasing in Missouri

Woke up Wednesday morning with the idea of heading to NW Missouri, so I headed up towards Maysville, MO where I topped off my tank and sat for awhile. A storm had gone up between Falls City and Nebraska City, NE and become tornado warned with other storms firing to the south on it’s flank, so I decided to position a little further north at the Iowa/MO line. I got my customary F-Iowa picture before continuing on into that crap state.

I sat north of Bedford where Scott Bennett and Mike Brady stopped by and we chatted for awhile until the storms overtook us. I decided to chase after, having to do seemingly rocket ship speeds to keep up.

November Chases are usually futile

I saw a couple suspicious clouds in the rain, but didn’t think anything of it. Skip Talbot had a nice picture from Mount Ayr, IA of a brief tornado and I would have been just northwest looking through the rain at that point, so perhaps I witnessed one – Im not sure.

Either way I found myself on US34 through Osceola and east behind a bunch of lightbar having whackerrs and in front of what seemingly was the ghostbusters car, falling further and further behind the storms as they raced away to the east.

BUST

I made it too far east, almost to Ottumwa before saying screw it and heading home.

I arrived back in Norman around 12:30 am, which could have been worse considering the circumstances. I hate Iowa.

Links

• StormTrack Reports Thread for November 11, 2015