July 14, 2010 chase account

FAIL

I know I said I was done chasing this season in the last entry, but...

This chase reeked of fail from the very start. I never even wanted to chase. The only reason I went was because EVERYONE in the meteorology department decided they wanted to go and I didn't want to be the only one sitting out when everyone else lucks out and sees a tornado in July. The big draw of the day was the off-the-charts instability. The RUC predicted values > 10,000 J/kg. Well the RUC always overdoes CAPE because it overdoes surface moisture. The soundings I saw had surface dewpoints in the middle 80s! While mid-80s dewpoints have occurred before, it remains a very rare occurrance. They did make it to the lower 80s, however (see plot), but that kept actual SBCAPE values at 8000 J/kg or below, which is still astronomically high, but not as unreal as what the RUC had been predicting.

Of course, along with any high instability day in July comes the cap, which was out in force this day (see plot). It made sure to squelch any chances of development in Iowa until very late in the day.

Meanwhile storms developed and went tornadic early in central/southeast Minnesota, dropping a few wimpy tornadoes before lining out like mad and rampaging across Wisconsin. I never made it north of the MN border. I didn't care. By 5 PM I knew nothing of interest was going to happen in an area we were chasing. We ended up heading south towards Clear Lake from the Iowa Welcome Center at exit 214 on I-35 on our way towards Algona to see if the cold front would light up right there before dark. It did, but we decided to take a detour to the Fort Custer Maze which we could see from the interstate. Definitely had a lot of fun there despite the oppressive heat and humidity. It was the hottest day of the year after all, with heat indices exceeding 110°F. When we got done at the maze we saw that storms had fired along the cold front to our west and north, but the storms looked pathetic due to the crappy shear over the boundary. The best shear was actually behind it. The thermodynamic gradient along the front wasn't so bad as to preclude convection behind the front, but all of the attention was ahead of it. Nothing happened behind it anyway.

Fort Custer Maze evidence

We got back to Ames by 9:00 PM. What's most sad about this day was that, not only did I not see a drop of rain during the chase, but the best show occurred after I got home. The dying part of the line (of course it would die as it approached Ames) put out a good lightning show. I was able to capture several bolts!

Lightning shot 1

Lightning shot 2

Who would've known that after a career day I would end the season with five straight non-tornado chases? I suppose I owe it to Mother Nature after she gave me nine on June 17th...sigh.

Return to 2010 - chasing home page