This ended up being one of the rare days where SPC puts a high risk in Iowa. Of course we had morning classes, but thankfully none of us had afternoon classes. When we left, this was the target zone for SPC.

We didn't quite agree with the area of high risk, so we started moving to the south. We figured that if we took I-35 south out of Ames, we would be in a good position to go west or east depending on where the storms developed. The main problem that day, like most Iowa chases, is that there was a low stratus deck obscuring the sky. When the storms did develop, it made it very difficult to tell what was what and where you were in relationship to the storms. The one thing that was certain about that day was that the storms when they developed would be moving very fast.

We left Ames around 12:30 PM and headed south. When we got close to the Iowa-Missouri border, we learned that storms had actually developed due west of our position. We got off the interstate and traveled west to intercept the storm. These storms were moving to the east northeast at over 60 miles per hour.

There was just so much that happened that day, I can't even begin to remember. We ended up driving constantly for a four hours at 60+ miles per hour. The reason is that we got sandwiched between two lines of supercell thunderstorms. The entire sky was rotating and again, it was hard to tell what was happening. We did see one tornado for sure off near Macksburg while the below warning was in effect.