Seize the storm

****UPDATED BELOW****

352 miles @  $2.59 a gallon = Getting the car wet

Oh well, I got the first chase of the season out of the way.   Got out of Brookings at about 4 pm and booked down I-29 to Sioux City where I made the usual stop at Chick Fil-A. Noticed some towers going up just after they issued a tornado watch for Turner County in SD. It was getting darker already so I decided to get back to SD and meet the storms in Yankton. Saw one good CG strike there and some pretty intense rain, and a smidgeoning of hail. Headed back home with an annoying crosswind that totally sucked on my mileage getting back to 29 from 90. My arm began to hurt after a while because I was pulling against the wind.   I got back at 10:30 pm.

It was my first chase with SwiftWX Professional 2.5 (I bought it at v2.1). It handled excellent. There were only a few problems that I had and that was because my internet connection dropped because my wife was calling me. Rory has done a great job with Swift. I’m glad he’s putting a lot of time into and getting a good beta group together to iron out all the issues.

UPDATE:

So apparently I got a little closer than I thought to the action.   Without data, I was driving along and to my left (south), I noticed some lower clouds and perhaps some sort of rotation.   Since the storm motion was to the northwest and I was northwest of it, I continued on in order to get out of the way.   It didn’t look too serious and the radio station I was listening to wasn’t issuing any warnings.   Now I smack myself for being without data.   Anyways, the reason for this update was that I got forwarded this screenshot from Wally Hollander, a guy from Indiana that was checking out the action that night.