Warm front chase in se IA. Intercepted tornado warned supercell south of Mount Pleasant noting wall cloud. Cell became rain wrapped and out of reach just before it produced, so retargeted cells to the south. Got a flat after crossing into Illinois, ending chase.
Crew and Equipment
Chase partners: Anton Seimon, Carsten Peter. Equipment: Sony AX100, Canon 60D with EFS 10-22, Samsung S9.
Day two chasing with Anton Seimon and Carsten Peter. This day looked much more robust, with guaranteed storms after the previous day's daytime cap bust. We targeted the warm front/warm sector in southeast Iowa for afternoon supercells with hopefully a tornado play as well.
I inexplicably had a wiper blade fly off the van as we approached our target of Mount Pleasant. With Rain-X it wasn’t a big deal, but set the tone for the rest of the chase. We rounded the top of Mount Pleasant before turning southbound, passing knots of chasers along the way. I recognized some from our background work with Twisters the previous year. They had the smart idea of waiting for the premature storm downstream.
The RFD wrapped in as the storm sailed off to the northeast, and that was the end of our view. With the fast northeast storm motion, we would not be able to get back into the notch before the cell crossed our north highway. The storm wound up spinning up an EF2 tornado with a 42-mile path length. Chasers who waited up by Mount Pleasant would get decent views while we were cut off to the south.
We wouldn’t be able to get back in front of that cell so we started dropping down the line and then crossed into Illinois to continue the chase. We stepped onto the grid, but the road was filled with potholes. I hit one and blew a tire. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a spare, and we were stranded.
We attempted to use Anton’s AAA service, but we were put into some kind of automated queue with no indication of when or if they were going to get back to us. Storms were lining out and approaching our position with nice sunset color, a tiny consolation for us.
Hank to the rescue... again. Carsten’s flight back to Germany was departing from Houston in a couple days, and Hank was heading back to Houston too. We traded stories for a bit, and then packed Carsten up and sent him off with Hank while Anton continued to wait.
The line overtook us and we sat in the rain waiting. I finally gave up on AAA and called a local tow company on the south side of the Quad Cities. They responded immediately and routed a tow our way that was finishing another call.
The tow truck arrived well after dark and towed us into the south side of the Quad Cities near the airport where we were able to get a room for the night. We walked over to the tire shop the next morning, and then got Anton over to the Quad Cities Airport for his flight home.
Conclusion
This was a bad bust for me. We just missed a long track tornado, having prematurely intercepted the storm with no way to keep up with it. That tornado was even the catch of the day, however. Beautiful cold core tornadoes formed in central Illinois. Blowing the tire just added insult to injury. I wound up getting a whole new set of Cross Climate 2 tires so that I would be better prepared for driving on wet roads. I turned the replacement tire from this chase into a full sized spare that I now keep in the back of the van, along with a regular jack and tire iron so I’m also prepared for the next flat.
Lessons Learned
Make sure you are prepared for a flat tire.
Stay downstream when intercepting a fast moving HP.
