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March 31st Severe Threat


pen_artist
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Thing was, this supercell/tornado seemingly did everything within the span of about five minutes. Cycle/twins. Cone. Drillbit. Multiple vortices. Helical vortex. "Ghost train" inflow jet. Massive debris cloud. Wedge. Too fast for me to take it all in, especially what with it being my first real significant tornado intercept.

033123KeotaIATornado.00_07_13_09.Still026.jpg

033123KeotaIATornado.00_07_24_11.Still027.jpg

033123KeotaIATornado.00_07_56_17.Still029.jpg

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35 minutes ago, hlcater said:

A bit late, but I worked at 11pm last night and again at 3pm today so my whole "post chase" process is a bit delayed. Don't have much to add off of what has already been posted but I started the day in Mt. Pleasant and planned to just kinda wait and play the field with the developing supercells. The wave in the morning was still a bit stable and while they were supercellular aloft, they were not surface based so I did not follow them east. I drove to fairfield to wait for the storms to the south and west to mature and ultimately chose the storm that would track near Ottumwa as it was obvious on radar/vis that it was the dominant storm. Perhaps due to some Winterset PTSD, I chose to stay miles and miles ahead of the storm and instead of close intercepts, planned my routes with keeping up in mind. Still, these were some of the most visually impressive tornadoes I have seen. Especially the Keota EF4.

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Hendrick tornado while it was in full swing from miles away.

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Handoff near Keota.

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The Keota tornado about as it was doing EF4 damage. This may be my favorite shot I've ever taken.

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Again as it was approaching Wellman. Big dusty wedge for most of its life. For those familiar with 2/28/17, think of it as Washburn on steroids.

 

 

Dude, absolutely impressive. You and every other chaser out there did great on the pictures and videos. I would love to witness/experience twin tornadoes.

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23 minutes ago, WxSynopsisDavid said:

Dude, absolutely impressive. You and every other chaser out there did great on the pictures and videos. I would love to witness/experience twin tornadoes.

It’s not hard when the storm is easily S tier and probably the best Iowa supercell since 4/9/11. Pella comes close but as someone who was at both, this beat Pella.

 

Will obviously need to wait for the rest of the year but I expect Keota in particular to be a serious TOTY contender.

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5 minutes ago, hlcater said:

It’s not hard when the storm is easily S tier and probably the best Iowa supercell since 4/9/11. Pella comes close but as someone who was at both, this beat Pella.

 

Will obviously need to wait for the rest of the year but I expect Keota in particular to be a serious TOTY contender.

I say that I would love to see them, because I’m a storm chaser based in the Mid-Atlantic. I have come close a few times chasing here in VA though.

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22 minutes ago, Witness Protection Program said:

Looks like falling bricks from the upper wall caused the Belvidere Apollo Theater roof collapse:

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Yeah, I only found out about that when I was looking through the Wikipedia tornado list last night (still waiting on DVN to officially confirm the handoff near Keota instead of having one EF4 path all the way from Wapello County up to Johnson County, been spamming them on Facebook with me and @hlcater's video). Sounds horrible, but they actually got lucky it wasn't a stronger tornado.

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Here is an approximate damage path of the March 31st EF4 tornado in Iowa, as per the information shown. I'm not sure how close to the town of Keota the EF4 level damage was.

Quote
Survey Summary:
A large violent tornado developed in southern Keokuk County and
tracked to the northeast across mostly open farmland through
eastern Keokuk County, northwest Washington County, into far
southwest Johnson County. The tornado produced EF3 damage to a
house northeast of Martinsburg, Iowa. It severely damaged several
homes near Keota, wiping one house completely off its foundation,
resulting in EF4 level damage. A car was lofted in the air and
tossed about 1000 feet into a nearby field and trees were
completely debarked with only stubs of the largest branches
remaining.  As the tornado tracked west of Wellman, Iowa it
knocked over a 325 ft cell phone tower. The tornado began to
dissipate as it tracked into far southwest Johnson County. We are
still in the process of gathering information on this tornado
track and plan to update with additional details over the coming
days.

 

location of EF4 iowa tornado mar 31.jpg

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The tornado count from the March 31st outbreak in Illinois now stands at 37, making it the 2nd largest tornado outbreak on record for Illinois. DVN is still combing through things, so that number could still change.

March 31st, 2023:
LOT: 17
DVN: 6
ILX: 12
LSX: 2

EF-U: 4
EF-0: 9
EF-1: 16
EF-2: 7
EF-3: 1

Biggest Illinois Tornado Outbreaks:
1. 39 - 4/19/1996
2. 37 - 3/31/2023
3. 35 - 4/2/2006
4. 29 - 12/1/2018
5. 25 - 11/17/2013

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  • 2 weeks later...

Didn't realize this until reading through NWS Chicago's summary page today, but apparently the Woodhaven Lakes campground near Amboy/Sublette, IL was hit by an EF2 on March 31st, same as they were on June 22, 2015 (same day as the Coal City-Braidwood EF3).

Frame grab from my video looking toward the totally rain-wrapped 2015 tornado (small consolation for me at the time for missing Rochelle 2 months earlier).
 

rain-wrapped-woodhaven-lakes-il-tornado-6222015_22960027351_o.thumb.jpg.bbd3196ca59b9e02c31415b3c28d40bf.jpg

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  • 7 months later...
1 hour ago, andyhb said:

image.png.b5f97dea5371f2473cc0a034fb05c184.png

Apparently the Robinson IL/Sullivan IN tornado from this event is being re-evaluated by NWS Lincoln, partly due to flooding that prevented surveys of certain portions of the track. Wonder if we get an upgrade to EF4 here.

Mildly off topic but did the Mayfield, KY tornado ever get re-evaluated? How that was below an EF5 is beyond me

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  • 3 months later...

Ahead of the 1-year anniversary of the 3/31/23 outbreak, NWS Quad Cities has put out a video breaking down the setup for the outbreak in their CWA, including the Keota etc tornado family. One of the frame grabs I sent them is in the graphic at 4 minutes (and on the thumbnail).
 

I was diving a little bit into the archived SPC data earlier this week, and DVN's summary here jives with my impression that this event was surprisingly thermodynamically driven for an early-season Midwest setup. While certainly more than adequate for significant tornadoes given the other conditions in place, the low-level shear (at least in terms of raw SRH values) in this area wasn't jaw-dropping by high-risk, violent tornado outbreak standards. What really put this over the top IMO was the 3CAPE and lapse rates, as well as nearly optimal streamwise vorticity ingestion per the hodograph allowed for maximal use of what spin there was in the atmosphere.

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