Iowa was the place to be in 2023 (and yes, I realize that rhymes.. Yippie)… so with another setup looming, I headed out to see if I could add to my Iowa count.  After Ottumwa earlier in the season, I knew it would be hard to top, but the setup had some potential, so off I went the day before on a drizzly drive out I-80 toward the Omaha area where I was going to bunk down for the night.

Got up the following morning and did my usual look at the models over a hotel breakfast.  With an early initiation looking likely, it was an early get out for me.  Loaded up the car and didn’t have to drive far; only the hour and change east toward the Des Moines area where I stopped for a quick lunch and before long, was already watching cells go up.

Storms got going south of the Des Moines area, so I hopped south via US-65 to Indianola, then eastbound on IA-92.  The cell was rotating like a top, and I thought for sure it was gonna thrown down a hog… instead, it let out a birdfart… regardless, it was the first of a few birdfarts..

The storm was fortunately on a very good path, keeping me on IA-92, eventually IA-5 toward Knoxville.  By this point, a chaser conga line had formed on the highway as all of us were hoping to do a little better with this storm.

North of town, the circulation really tightened up… and just like the tornado before, it started making it happen…

I pursued this feature north with it crossing IA-14… needing to decide the best route back to the business end of this storm, I decided it would be quicker to get north of Lake Red Rock and take a little piddle road (Hwy G 28) to Pella, then drop south back in front of this thing.  Fortunately it was moving slow enough to make that happen.  Once I got to Pella, I dropped south out of there on Marion County Hwy 117, punching through a pretty benign core (the heaviest part still to my west at this point).

As I got near the River, the road makes a hard pivot back west.  With a view into the area of circulation, I could make out what looked to be a pretty stout looking cone.  Conveniently for me, what was probably the best looking tornado of this storm was shrouded deep in rain, so I only got a fleeting look at it from my north position.

I followed this storm to Oskaloosa, but with nothing exciting going on, I took the opportunity to gas up, grab a bite, and decide my next course of action.  Another promising cell to the west gave me enough reason to not directly high-tail it back to Des Moines, so I retraced my path back along IA-5/92 and found myself on what was easily the storm of the day.

I don’t know how this thing didn’t drop a show… the rotation at the cloud base was probably as intense as I have seen.  And many times, it looked like it was close.

The wall cloud continued to spin along, and with a host of chasers lined up on area roads, it finally put down…

This show seemed to linger for a while, but after this impressive attempt, the funnel retracted into the clouds.  I didn’t stick with the storm too terribly long, working my way east back to Knoxville before opting to call it for the day.  Figuring it was early enough and I wasn’t far from Des Moines, I booked myself a room and worked my way back to Des Moines for a celebratory steak dinner to ring in yet another successful Iowa chase.