On Tuesday, April 16th, 2024 Colin Davis and I made the trip to southeast Iowa in hopes of chasing a round of evening supercells. While early storms organized to our southwest we hung back near Mount Pleasant, Iowa before making our approach.
From a distance south of Danville, Iowa it was apparent there was a likely rain-wrapped tornado ongoing from our vantage point. We made our intercept north of New London where we picked up the partially rain wrapped directly tornado to our west. For the next 15 minutes or so we pursued the fast-moving tornado (~50 mph forward motion northeast, when we could only zig-zag north and east.) as it played peekaboo with rain curtains being wrapped around by the storm's rear-flank downdraft.
The supercell raced northeast crossing the Mississippi River south of Muscatine, but was mostly transitioning to a linear mode. We set our sights on a trailing storm to the south approaching Aledo, Illinois. The storm exhibited a mothership like appearance on the horizon as it swept over us with hail and high winds.
Some video highlights today, and a long-form storm observation VLOG to come!