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This Report is to the best of my recollection due to all that happened this day, my head is still shell shocked Nor will I be posting any pictures of this event as I did not get many
On Sunday May 25, 2008 Kurt Hulst, Bob Hartig, Bill and Tom Oosterbaan Jason Harris and myself left our hotel room in Sioux City Iowa, and headed toward Minnesota for what looked like a great day for storm chasing.
We stopped in a down for Fuel, and lunch, and noticed a MD up for our area. We then headed a bit south to open Country to wait for the storms to fire.
At approximately 12:00 Noon A PDS tornado watch was issued for our area, including parts of Iowa. We started to play the waiting game for weather to go north or south. We started seeing storms firing up in Iowa, and proceeded to head back south to intercept.
On our way south we started to get into heavy rain, and small hail. Shortly thereafter we started seeing Shingles, and Debris falling from the sky. At this time I am thinking oh crap, what are we getting into? Kurt and myself got Separated from Bill, Tom, Bob, and Jason, and started heading to the south side of the storm before they did. We ended up just outside of Dunkerton where we witnessed a very large, later identified as being Approximately 1.2 Miles wide Wedge tornado. The tornado was starting to become rain wrapped. I started getting video of the tornado and stopped to make a report via Spotter Network. After finding out that Des Moines NWS does not have a setup with spotter network I called them on the phone via the spotter line. I informed them as to the tornado, and shortly thereafter lost the call with them. I then started with the video again. We didn’t know at this time that the tornado had started to dissipate due to the rain wrapping. Kurt later found on his video that the tornado reformed, but again from the rain it was hard to see it. Later on we met back with the guys and started taking in what we had just witnessed as Iowas First EF-5 Tornado in 32 years. Bill, Tom, Jason, and Bob decided to start for home, while Kurt and I stayed out for a bit longer. We met up with Fabian Guerra, where we witnessed another Brief Spin-up, Not sure if this will be a gustnado, or Tornado.
After that, Kurt and I started to head back to the interstate. We stopped to try and get some lightning pictures, but all the lightning was imbedded in the clouds. Afterwards we started to head for home.
David D. Diehl
KC9BXX
bravenet.com