23 July 2004

My account of the 23 June 2004 Madison, Wisconsin, tornado

Most days when returning home from work I am eager to go out storm chasing if the skies and conditions look favorable for severe weather.

That Wednesday was not much different. I had inquired about the chance of going out, but my husband George had not shared my excitement for going. He initially had thought that there would not be severe weather that day, but he was expectantly watching a storm approaching from Minnesota. We packed up all the equipment and got it ready to go, then waited and watched the radar and satellite images.

I had previously watched a storm from a good vantage point at a local health club. When we finally decided to head out because the storm was getting close, this was the place we chose to go. The parking lot there gives a great view to the west and to the northwest. Quickly packing up the car with all the necessary wires, chargers, radios, cameras, and a few odds and ends, we headed out quickly to get into position before the storm arrived.

As we headed down through the parking lot in front of our apartment, I had to stop the car, and George took some pictures of the great anvil thunderstorm clouds that we could already see. This added to the anticipation of getting to the health club to see what was going on. We quickly got in the car again and headed out.  

Arriving at the health club, I quickly picked an open spot that faced the west. There were many other cars around us. Some of the other people that were in the parking lot were also looking at the storms. When I jumped out and started taping, a couple of people asked what was going on. I explained the chance of the severe thunderstorm coming through and felt bad for the one guy on a bike since there was a good chance he was not going to make it home in a dry condition.  

There was so much to see it was hard to pick what to tape. George pointed out some features that were of interest, but there were some great features I remembered from spotter talks that I had attended. These spotter talks definitely helped me to pick out some of the better features and get some very nice shots of the storm structure.

The sun was right at the horizon, so it back lit the storm nicely, except for occasionally causing the video to over expose when coming across the sun. It took a lot of work to keep the sun out of the direct view of the camera.

I love a good storm and was very excited about this one. It already had good wall clouds and excellent motion. As usual, my camera liked to go into auto focus, which is never good for catching the action in the distance. This problem of having to push the manual focus button and adjusting the focus by hand caused some shots to be out of alignment, unfocused or shaky.  

As the storm came ever closer and definite inflow up the side of the wall cloud could be seen with certainty, a few possible funnel clouds were viewed off in the distance. This was very exciting, and my heart was racing as I had hoped to get some good shots of a distant tornado. I constantly looked around while taping in case something was showing up around the area that was not in the video camera view.

This is when I noticed that there was a rainbow behind us, and the moon was out above. I quickly took some video of this, as it was rather amazing. At that time I also noticed that the clouds overhead were swirling and moving about. When you are looking up, you can take in the whole of the clouds. But I was quite upset when the video camera would not pan back far enough to see large areas of the clouds above. I again took some interesting pictures of a cloud swirl that looked like a hammer and another that looked like an eye. This latter image can be seen below. (The time stamp is ten minutes fast.)

I did not realize that the tornado was forming right over my head. It was incredibly exciting and fascinating to see all this motion. Then the storm decided it was time to let us know that it was there and, like a car blowing a horn, hit us with some incredible gusts of wind and rain.

I made a mad dash to the car and sat inside until the winds died down and the rain subsided a little. It didn't take long to get out of the car and begin taping again. The storm and the tornado were going over the top of the health club and disappearing quickly behind the building. I hated to miss anything, so I didn't immediately move. The swirling clouds and now visible tornado gave for some great pictures. There was very little sound except for the blowing of the tornado sirens. There was no more wind where we were, and the storm made no sounds.  

When I finally realized we were going to lose sight of the storm behind the building, I made the decision to hobble my way down to the parking lot to chase after the storm. My knee does not allow for quick movement, as I had injured it earlier this year

I caught sight of the storm again as I made my way down the side of the building. I started taping again, and my limping motion is very prevalent as the camera image rocks back and forth until I reached the bottom of the hill and got the camera focused again. 

This is where I caught the multi-vortex tornado over the town. At one time it looked just like a cow udder. I thought that was appropriate for a Wisconsin tornado, so I took some extra footage of that feature. The part that was really rotating was out in front of the tornado, and I was watching that area most of the time. It was the most incredible cloud rotation I had ever seen.

The rain started to get heavier as I watched the cloud mass with the tornado disappear in the distance, becoming obscured by rain.  I covered the camera with a plastic bag so that it would not get wetter than it needed to. Finally, I was not able to see the storm real well and decided to get back up to where George was waiting to see if we could chase after the storm and possibly catch up to it again.

We took off quickly, but the rain was coming down increasingly hard. Everything was obscured by the rain that we were driving through. We tried to get to where the reports indicated the tornado was located and headed south on Hwy 14 to try to intercept it again. We got plummeted by rain, leaves and twigs on the road, and I finally had to pull over because I could not see.

The car was overheating and not running real well by this point, so we had to give up the chase. I managed to limp the car back to the Burger King restaurant, where it died. There was a magnificent lightning show in the thunderstorm to our south, and I got a few pictures of that between getting eaten by mosquitoes and being annoyed by the lighted restaurant sign. This was the end of our chase for the evening.