Severe thunderstorms rocked Wisconsin yesterday afternoon…All this info is preliminary things could change as the NWS throughout WI does storm damage surveys ….Yesterday WI saw 7 tornadoes…Here are the Counties that reported tornadoes….Eau Claire 1, Adams 2 , Marathon 2, Lincoln 1, and Winnebago 1. There was 49 hail reports…Wind reports came in at 37….One has to be careful when looking at the reports as some may be double reported..This is why this is all preliminary…..Would I call this a severe weather outbreak..Yes and no, here's what I mean…I would call it a mini severe weather outbreak….This could have been much worse than what it was…The storms did have a hard time breaking the cap yesterday afternoon in Eastern MN/Western WI, if they would have be able to break the cap sooner it would have been much worse than what it was, a larger area of WI would have been effected…There was some wind problems also on the start of the storms….Once the storms started to fire up it didn’t take long for severe weather to become a problem..Will break that down for my local area in awhile….Storms were booking off to the East/Northeast anywhere form 50 to 70 MPH..So one had to be on a storm just about the time it went up….
Ok now on to my some what of a chase log….
The map below shows day one outlook from the Storm prediction Center...
I was forecasting this event days ahead of time…Yesterday was the play and wait game…I forecasted storms would get going around the 3 PM hour one can see that below.. The SPC(The Storm Prediction Center issued an MD (Meso Discussion) at 1:30 PM here is the map below….
So now the waiting game went to chaser mode…One nice thing about targeting the my local area I could sit and watch the data….The SPC issued a PDS tornado watch for a good part of WI at around 3:24 PM see map below….
I decided to head toward Southeast Barron County….I was down my New Auburn that was the right area to be…However I made a big no no…I heard one of my friend and his friend was going to be chasing,so I told them to meet me in Almena at the time I thought would be ok…I got there only to find out they headed to Dallas WI…Well I sat there on this cell looked like it had everything going for it so I played it for awhile then it poof it died….
I started to head East then…My friend said they were getting on Hwy 8 I told them to meet me in Barron well to make a long story short they headed East…I wanted to meet up with them then they could have followed me…So now I knew I had to book to catch back up with the storms….Thanks God for back roads and short cuts I got to know over the years of chasing in the land of hills and trees…To make this shorter I got over into Taylor County, Marathon,and Lincoln Counties…These is where we saw our two tornadoes, was hard to really tell at first however after looking at the video last night we did get two… I will try to post a vid clip and some pictures later today,as time is running short..
The map below shows the storm reports and the outlook..From the SPC...
For the local area here is how the warnings went down....
Severe thunderstorm warning issued at 3:37 PM to 4:15 PM for the following Counties.
South Central Barron, West Central Chippewa,Dunn, Northerneastern Pierce,and Southeastern ST. Croix....
Severe thunderstorm warning issued at 4:34 PM to 5:15 PM for the following Counties...
Southeastern Barron, Western Chippewa,Northeastern Dunn,and Rusk....
Tornado warning issued at 4:45 PM to 5:15 PM for the following Counties..
Southeastern Barron, Western Rusk,Northwestern Chippewa,Northeastern Dunn....
Warnings were in my email box plus I also get them on my cell phone..All warnings come from the NWS....
All in all it was a good chase day….I had a good system in place however I threw that out the window as I was trying to meet up with my friend…I was a little ticked about that, but it was their lost in the long run…Though it would have been fun to have them chase with us….I tried, I don’t think they trusted my skills, maybe next time….I know my nowcaster was ticked at me cause I didn't head South…But by time I got done screwing around I knew it was going to be to late to get there…I was some what pissed at myself and kinda took it out on him as he was giving my all the warnings to my South so I had like tons of warnings! As I get the warning on my cell phone from the NWS…Once I got back to where I wanted to be, my nowcaster did a great job so I do have to thank him for that!...So my lesson was learned…That will never happen again no more wasting time…Anyone who wants to meet up with me you will have to find me!….Yes I’m still kicking myself hard for that,knowing I could have got the tornado down by EAU also…..
I’m not pissed at my friend or my nowcaster, just myself! Just so they both know that !!