6/21/2009 - Dike, IA Tornado

Sunday was an interesting day – Sharon and I woke in Kettle Moraine State Park campground after enjoying a Phish show the night before at Alpine Valley. Though we had the campsite reserved for another day, we decided to pack up and head toward Iowa for the chance of storms and an air conditioned hotel room with a shower (hey, we are getting old!). After checking out Lake Geneva, we ventured west through Beloit, Dubuque, and over to Independence, IA, where we checked in at a motel early in the afternoon. After check-in, we tidied up and got back in the car and raced westward toward storms that had formed an hour or so earlier near Williams, IA. We intercepted the storms along US-20 near Cleves, IA – in fact, we drove up on a nice wall cloud producing intermittent funnels with wisps of clouds/circulations touching the ground (aka weak-ass tornadoes) as we exited the 4-lane at Cleves. This primary circulation became rain-wrapped and we scooted east and southeast along county roads through the towns of Wellsburg and Holland, where we witnessed intermittent funnel activity and strong low-level rotation. We failed to see the rain-wrapped tornado near Holland, but we did see a big mass of precip rotating feverishly. We pushed east and then south along a dirt road east of Holland where we went under a new, small updraft. We kept our primary “eye” out to the west toward the more “severe” storm, which was had the rain-wrapped circulation near Holland. However, my attention quickly turned to this small storm we had just gone under during its development stage since it was acquiring a unique “kink” feature and, soon, a funnel. We scooted east to stay ahead of the eastbound storm to our immediate west, keeping an eye on this small storm to our north. Soon, a funnel reformed, lengthened, and produced a nice elephant trunk tornado near Dike. Admittedly, our position for viewing the tornado was not great since we were a good 8-12 miles from this tornado. But, hey, I’ll take it. [For a closer view, check out this pic here!] The tornado quickly became engulfed (from our perspective) with rain from the west as the west storm wrapped around the Dike storm. We then ventured south and east to intercept a new storm that put on an outflow dominant display at sunset between Dysart and Vinton, IA. Ended the night with a short drive to our hotel where we enjoyed the air conditioning!

You’ll have to excuse the photography below. I did not anticipate chasing this weekend, so I only had my cheap point-and-shoot, as well as my small video camera.

Funnel near Cleves, IA.

Small storm south of Dike wraps up quickly -- producing a funnel -- as it crosses the warm front. The more "severe" storm (pictured above in 1st pic) was off to my left at this point.

Tornado. Contrasted to bring out the tor a bit better. Hog farm was damaged. [For a closer view, check out this pic here!]

Wider view of the tornado ... a good 8-12 (?) miles away.

Storm near Dysart, IA -- soon became outflow dominant.

A bit of time-lapse for the day. Nothing great; but, hey, it's something.