Seize the storm

Short:
Couple actual or attempts at funnel clouds, hail, intense rain, gusty winds pulling leaves off trees.   I learned a lot about navigation and positioning.   The pictures I took weren’t that great as the event was so wide-scale. The pockets of rotation were numerous.

Long:
I got out of Brookings late and was headed out north of town, intending to turn toward Huron, but I saw a wall cloud over by Bruce and took the next road I could towards the interstate.   When I got to the interstate, I had an excellent view of the storm.   I believe it was only severe warned at this point.

The core was a bright blue color, almost like waters of the carribean. About a mile and a half west of the interstate was the main area of rotation.   Hindsight now, I should have kept east of the storm.   But instead I headed north on the interstate and quickly found myself on the eastern fringes of the bear’s cage.   Realizing my minor predicament and with no way to turn around on the interstate, I had to push forward.   Turns out I was only about two or three miles from the next exit, but had a lot of rain and hail in between.   Suffered four small hail dents on the roof of my car, but made it out east of the storm around Toronto.   I elected to keep going east to ensure I had a good position for safe-viewing.   Down the road at Astoria, I witnessed some incredible wide-scale rotation.   It was about one to two miles to my west.   Staying in front of this storm, I rode it eastward until I saw some new cells to my NE and so I put myself in position to watch both.   Saw one or two attempts at funnels…nothing could get together.  

In Minnesota by now, things were sparking up in SD again, so back west I went.   Heading through Hendricks, I turned south and was held up by either some curious public or local fire department/emergency officials.   At any rate, I didn’t like our slow moving position(35 mph in a 45), so finally they pulled off to the side to let me pass as we weren’t quite out of town yet.   Next I went east to get to 75, looking back occasionally toward Hendricks but could not see much other than a storm.   The rest of the trip was spent trying to get back to SD.   I kept having to go south to make sure I was in a good place to cut back west towards Brookings.   Tried to head west at Lake Benton, but met Lake Benton police that said a tornado was headed this way.   Listening on my NWS radio, it had said all the serious stuff was on the northern side of Brookings county.   But I figured that he might have heard something over his law enforcement radio – so back east and south I went.

Finally just north of Pipestone, I caught a road back west and headed back home, watching the most incredible sight.   I’d say there were at least four or five cells producing lightning very close to dark and it was so cool to see the lightning go 20 miles to my west, then 15 miles to my northwest, then 5 miles to my north.   The best sight was seeing the light from Brookings reflecting off of the low cloud base.   Eerie, yet very beautiful.