4-21-2012: Western MN Funnel Clouds & Tornado

The morning started out by teaching the Skywarn Spotter Training at the WROC in Morris, MN. The training had a very good turnout.

After some morning showers, the sun popped out just enough to spark some instability in the air.

Early afternoon we watched the radar and saw reports of funnel clouds associated with the line of storms that seemed to pop up on the radar. Nick and I quickly got into the car and quickly raced to the west and captured these photos.

EF-0 Tornado 3 miles NW of Chokio, MN
1:40pm CDT

Dime size hail fell after the tornado.

Funnel Cloud 3 Miles NW of Chokio (second one in area)

A Look at the storms after they passed overhead.

Rotating Wall cloud with small needle funnel West of Donnelly, MN

Funnel Cloud near Morris, MN

April 14-15, 2012 Chase

4-14-12

Traveled to Nebraska to get on the High Risk for tornadoes. Cells fired way off to the west and we headed East toward Des Moines, Iowa to spend the night. We had an excellent lightning show near Des Moines of the severe warned cell that was racing north fast.

4-15-12 

Cells rapidly organized in the warm sector and raced North in Watonwan County MN not long before producing brief tornadoes straight north near the boundary up in McLeod County MN. 

Was a fun ending to a great long distance chase across the Plains & Upper Midwest!

 Here is a picture of the cell in Watonwan County and our chase route map of the weekend.