4-29-10 Western IA Chase

Well to start off I swear God was telling me not to go out chasing but as the sinner I am I decided not to follow his signs. The final blow that was telling me not to go was when we were 20 miles away from home I got a call from my wife (Jill) saying that her car broke down in Sioux Falls, it over heated and the cooling fan wasn't running. I should have turned around then and there, but we pressed on knowing that the car will maintain a decent temp if you keep it moving and don't run the AC. The car did make it home where it sits in our garage waiting for me to fix it.

Ok, now with the chase, ugh what a deal! We took off at 3:00 with an initial target of Onawa, IA. We got to Onawa around 4:30 just as the SPC issued a tornado watch further south, so we pressed onto Missourri Valley, IA. We sat there, grabbed supper and then checked data, we noticed there was a cell SW of Sioux City, IA that we could easily get to with strong rotation. We didn't really want to risk going back north too bad as we knew if we went up north and this storm dies that would be the last of chasing for the night because it would be too late to get to the southern IA storms that were rolling in. We then got a call from a nowcasting EXWX team member saying... go go go, so we listened and took off North!

The whole drive up to this storm I was really nervous knowing that this could be a complete bust and die on us when it hits the Missourri River but if it survived past the river it would really take off and go crazy, it was a risk that we took. We got back up to Sloan, IA and watched the storm die off :( It's part of chasing, you bust sometimes so we weren't upset, just bummed. We met up with Marc Hicks and Brent Koops in Sioux City and shot the shit for a little bit before heading home. Here are the pictures right before the storm died.