Busy day yesterday in southern Minnesota, which included my first two Minnesota tornadoes since the Wadena event in 2010. The image above was the second tornado east of Truman, which briefly fully condensed to the ground. This was the longer-lived of the two, not terribly strong, but certainly a looker. The first one was from the same parent storms a few minutes prior with a brief, non-fully-condensed touchdown, with several minutes between the two ground contacts. It’s not entirely out of the question this was one tornado, just had a multi-minute gap between contact, but we’ll see what the surveys say. I haven’t gone through my video in a ton of detail to accurately determine that myself. But I was close to both, within a mile, and had a great view the entire time. I’ll yap a bit about the chaser traffic in a later blog, but I had a social media post get a little attention and I want to talk a bit about how I’ve changed my chasing around these situations.
Today, I wake up in Cedar Falls, Iowa; landed her last night shortly before 11pm and got my first night of uninterrupted sleep in a while. I’ve been dealing with some physical ailments early on this trip which alleviated a bit yesterday and allowed me to sleep through the night finally. Still a bit groggy as I sit down to write this, but it’s probably because I could use a couple more nights of that to get me back at 100%.
Fortunately I am closer to my target than I thought I would be last night. Not because I had the target elsewhere, but because I ended up geographically closer to said target than I thought having not looked at a map. I don’t get up to this part of Iowa very often. Trying to even think if I have ever been through Waterloo. Probably, just not recently. That said, it’s another boundary play, and that’s really going to determine exactly where I set up. My hope is that its south of the WI/IL border, although a quick look at Google Maps satellite implies decent terrain to chase across far southwestern Wisconsin. Just gotta get away from the Mississippi River area where trees are a bit more obvious. Again, not having chased up here a whole lot, I’m a bit unfamiliar with the area.
Similar to yesterday, where I was going into largely uncharted chase territory, I spent some time in the morning studying routes and river crossings. It’s actually HOW I navigated across a river crossing south of Amboy, Minnesota yesterday where I got ahead enough of the chaser congo line to avoid being stuck in that traffic for more than a couple minutes. I knew about the one county road between the two east/west state/US highways that everything funneled into that one road to cross the river. Fortunately when I hit that point, I was already looking to move on to a different storm, so that was my ONLY traffic issue of note yesterday. But it would saved me had I been in a more urgent situation. It’s one of the tips that I think a lot of new chasers don’t realize, particularly in areas you’re unfamiliar with, is to try to know the routes and large scale escapes. It’s a situational awareness, knowing the towns in the area I was sparked that memory that ‘oh yeah’, I have a river crossing to contend with and I need to make that move a little earlier so I don’t get squeezed. Today, other than the Mississippi River, you’re generally pretty open between US-151 to the north and US-20 to the south. One note is that Google Maps shows US-20 closed west of Stockton, IL. There are a couple nearby roads to detour around there, but in the heat of the chase, that could prove gnarly. Again, just having the Illinois towns of Elizabeth and Woodbine in my head will spark that reminder that the closure is right up the road and I need to account for that in my next moves.
So yeah, my morning thoughts as I pull myself together and get ready for today. Tomorrow looks like it could be the same general region, although a bit more messy of a setup. Thursday at the moment, I am treating as a down day ahead of Friday, which will likely be the LAST of this particular trip. I’ll be westbound for home this weekend. See my chase planner there on the right for rough plans heading into early next week. Beyond that, looks like at least one, maybe two systems in the train, the first being late next week and the next one possibly shortly thereafter. WAAAY to far out to even begin to assess those, but I would imagine with the active pattern in place, after a short break early next week, I will be back at it!
See ya on the road!