April 15, 2026
Statistics
Springfield, IL 9:24 AM 4/15/2026
Springfield, IL 10:31 PM 4/15/2026
Wall Cloud, Whale's Mouth
Summary
Dryline setup in south central Iowa targeting Lamoni for afternoon tornadic supercells. Intercepted tornado warned supercell near Woodburn noting base and lowering. Cell gusted out at dusk with colorful whale's mouth texture.
Crew and Equipment
Solo chase. Equipment: Sony AX100, Canon 60D with EFS 10-22, Samsung S25 Ultra.
Video
Map
Details
After sitting out the previous two setups waiting for a local play that never materialized, I decided to finally go for it. And I liked this setup with storms firing along dryline and surface trough where winds would back around the top of the low pressure near De Moines. This was coupled with cold air aloft that would make for robust updrafts. Convective Allowing Models showed a long track supercell trekking across Iowa, but it looked to be just north of the warm sector and likely an elevated hailer. I instead targeted the dryline running south along 35 into Missouri. My preliminary target was Lamoni.
A line of storms was going up west of 35 as I arrived. I sat a few miles to the east waiting for something to become dominant, noting a wall cloud on one cell before it became buried in converging cells.
Two cells had my attention, and I ran east across the interstate to keep them both in play. The southern cell became dominant and picked up a tornado warning. I moved in for the intercept, my route taking me back west a couple miles. I thought I had enough spacing to cut in front of the storm heading south, but I was wrong. I wound up doing a direct core punch, hail well above severe thresholds. Even worse, I actually came out behind the updraft base. I must have really misjudged the storm speeds.
I had a nice high contrast view of the southern end of the base and flanking line, but any wrap-around would cut off my view of a developing tornado now.
I spotted a lowering in the rain up ahead.
It probably wasn’t rotating, however.
Looking north at the backside of the cell with a brilliant white, sharply defined hail core:
I stair stepped with the storm until dusk. It was solidly behind cold outflow at this point, but as the sun dropped, the base lit up with gorgeous color and texture. There was no real chance of getting a tornado, but it was the most photogenic part of the chase. I called the chase as the color and light faded, heading for home.
One last look at the storm as thousands of toads and chorus frogs sang from nearby ponds.
Conclusion
This setup underperformed from what I expected in terms of tornadoes, and I probably picked the wrong day to finally make an Iowa run. Still, there were several photogenic moments and some dramatic structure on this chase that made the trip worthwhile for me.
Lessons Learned
- Double check storm motion before attempting a core punch.
