Summer Fun

Well it's been 2 months since my last post and I thought I should fill you in on my current activities in the field of chasing and forecasting. I am still staying very current with my forecasting but I haven't been able to chase as much as I was hoping this spring mainly because there just wasn't crap worth driving for. I have done quite a few smaller "backyard" chases around NW IA and SW MN. Overall these have been a ton of fun and have even gotten pretty intense. I'll give a breef outline of my more memorable chases this summer starting with May 31, 2009


May 31, 2009
Jill (my wife) and I were sitting at my parents having a couple of drinks watching this storm develop and come our way. Around 9:30 the lightning really started up so Jill and I decided to go get some photo ops. Here they are, sorry for not knowing our cameras settings and not knowing that they had the options they had but here they are.

June 18, 2009

All the convective outlooks looked to have moderate warnings for N central IA and as soon as work was over a group of us crazy asses decided to take off to chase. We took off from Sioux Center right at 6:00pm headed E at a good pace, got to Estherville IA and re-grouped, looked at the radar and nothing was firing. Looked at sat. images still nothing the only thing that would be fun was way up by Brookings, SD moving E NE at 15mph so we knew we could get up towards Marshall, MN in time (1 3/4 hrs) so we did. We put on 350mi. and when we got just south of Marshall we stopped for some pictures and as soon as it hit Buffalo Ridge the storm died. Nothing, not even lightning wanted to fire so we drove 350 mi. 7 1/2 hrs in a vehicle for 10 min. of photo taking. Still no regrets we still made it a blast.

June 21, 2009 (Fathers Day)

I just want to say sorry to my Dad for being late to his supper but this thing was crazy. 4:10PM I get paged out on the Fire Dept. saying we need to go out spotting. I just looked at the radar about 45min. before that and I had ruled out the thought of going out because it just didn't look like it could possibly strengthen but I WAS WRONG!!! So I get in my truck start heading out, booting my computer, getting in online, firing up the cameras, I look straight north of RV, what do you know but a rotating wall cloud!!! It was really close to putting something down a couple times but it just didn't want to. So I called a couple people, got them on the road to assist chasing it lasted to Boyden and then it was done. The rain choked it off.

July 7, 2009
I knew that this was going to be a good night to chase but I was busy until 7:00 PM so I got started late but still ended up on some great structure in Le Mars, IA.

August 2, 2009

Mainly lightning with this storm but there were 70+mph winds that were recorded in Rock Valley along the gust front. I ended up getting trapped in the front and almost went in the ditch but I recovered. This was a great lightning op. storm so thats exactly what we did! BTW: we are getting better with our cameras and always learning what settings we should use to get those harder to capture photos.

P.S. Credits go out to Brent Koops for the Marshall, MN picture. I would also like to say thanks to the team so far this year, we have done a great job with not much to work with.

Our chase group consists of Brent Koops, Luke Kroese, Greg Rardin, Pete De Boer, Jill and myself. Thanks again guys.