First Chase 4-5-10

Well to start off there is nothing else to say but "dissapointment". Marc Hicks and I left Rock Valley, IA at noon with our initial target area of St. Joe, MO. We get down to St. Joe at around 4:00, top off the tank of gas, and check data. The surface plots were showing great dew points a little to the west of us so we figured why not and headed west to Hiawatha, KS where we meet up with some other chasers. After about an hour in Hiawatha watching some towers trying to bust the Cap  and get sheared off we checked data again and pretty much ruled that we might have a bust on our hands. The Cap was way too strong to do much with, so unless there was a definate sign we were going to head north towards home and stick our tail between our legs. We finally decided to call it and head towards home and maybe cut back into MO just incase there is a slim possibility of a tower busting the Cap (wishful thinking!!!). All would have gone to plan except there was an issue with the car, it wouldn't start, the battery was completly dead. Luckily Marc had a jumper pack and we got it jumped and headed north out of Hiawatha. 7 miles out of town the car died again, this happened a total of 4 times (thank goodness KS has great people that are willing to help). As we were heading home we saw to our south west a large line of towers going up that tempted us but we knew it was home or bust at this point.

We headed to hwy 75 where we knew Brent Koops and Justin Vink were and met up with them, we all got a little touch of the anvil that was forming and felt the dissapointment but we all knew we had to get home and work the next day so we pressed on. Leaving that storm really put a damper on the rest of the way home but at least we knew that we forecasted it correctly because the storm that we would have been on was the strongest around, and produced 2" hail. There was one tornado reported that day but that was east of St. Louis and that was middle afternoon. Our skills were put the the test and it truly did pay off except the car problems. Sorry to all of those who were going to watch our live stream, since the alternator went bad we couldn't run the inverter to power the laptop/camera equipment. There will be another day that will be glorious and everyone will be able to see what we see. For now here are some more pictures of the storm we had to abandon.