May 1st, 2018 Clarion, IA
Today was a slight risk day for where we were chasing, there was some shear in place but there wasn’t a lot of moisture to work with as dew points were barely 60 degrees today. I ended up meeting with co chaser Steven Solie today. We ended up chasing 2 super cells. Our first was put up some very beautiful structures. going as far as you can see. there was some rotation in that storm, but generally seemed weaker then I wanted so we went on to a bigger severe warned storm wsw from where we were and we ended up catching it just north of Clarion, IA. We met another great guy, Tom and we chatted for a bit, then decided we wanted to get closer and see what this thing had to offer. In the video below there is definitely some action areas in this storm along with a lowering. Some rotation and overall very pleasing storm to watch. But this storm seemed to die down the closer to dark we got. I think if we were on this storm 30-45 minutes earlier…we maybe would have seen a good chance at a tornado or at least a fast rotating wall cloud as on radar it had very tight rotation on the south end of it. Was a great chase though, met a great guy (Tom) and always enjoy chasing in Iowa. Bill Kranski