June 27, 2020

From my morning "chasecast" storm chasing forecast discussion:

"Day 1 Today: Most interested in potential landspout play east to west across Iowa, north of 80. Steep low level lapse rates over northern Iowa, coupled with a pool of 0-3km CAPE on what looks like some kind of boundary there with some surface vorticity. Get on initiation in the next couple hours. Park it immediately underneath a robust tcu and hope for something.

Targets to the west over CO and western NE look shut down for significant surface based play. Initiation expected but low level thermodynamics are not favorable with very high LCL and LFC heights and positive lid strength. Sig. tornado not expected as a result.

Haven't looked further south in MO, but was expecting more of an MCS down there. "

This was supposed to be mainly a ferry day for the whole team to the Northern and High Plains. The team split up and moved west at their own pace. I saw potential for a landspout play, so Brindley and I diverted off of I-80 to chase towering cumulus in west central Iowa. A robust updraft approached and looked to be organizing. We were amazed to a see a circulation at the surface with some light corn husk "debris" being lofted into the air and a tube of dust forming. It lastest merely seconds and there was only remnant dust in the air by the time we could get our cameras on it. It might have been a landspout and technically a tornado, but I'll withold counting it as we couldn't get a clean shot to really confirm it, and it might as well have been a gustnado on the small cell's gust front. It was an exciting moment for what was supposed to be a zero chances day.

We chased cells as they continued to pop up around us, but it was the initial developing activity that seemed to have the most potential as steep low level lapse rates were replaced by rainy cold pools.

An Impossible Burger and beer on the patio on a gorgeous evening in Sioux Falls was a sunbeam shining through the gloom of 2020.