Seize the storm

Turkey’ed 

I didn’t even get the car wet.  I started off at 4:30 getting out of Brookings and took off to Sioux Falls.  Once down there, the storms started dying and were too far away.  I saw a cell firing back to the north of Brookings and went back home.  I picked up Amy and took off north of town.  We got all the way to the Estelline exit and then went east and headed north to Clear Lake.  At this point, I found out that a tornado had been reported with that cell.  Come to find out later that it was Scott Olson who reported it.

Back to the chase, we continued to head north where I spotted a black van with what appeared to be a mesonet on top.  We pulled over for photo ops and he continued on.  We stair-stepped a little and got some more shots…of some turkeys - three of them.  Shortly after this, we were observing a large rotating cloud that had a very pretty backlight on it.  I spot a van coming up behind us and it’s Scott Olson.  He showed me his pictures of the tornado and we gabbed about how everything was good and now it wasn’t.  We were tempted at taking a shot at another cell or two but Amy and I decided it was getting too late and nothing was probably going to happen anyways.

So funny though, Scott turns back west toward the interstate with cells to our north and northeast and gets down about a quarter of a mile then pulls a U-turn and heads back toward the cells.  Apparently they had strengthened a bit.  So he went east toward the storms and we headed home.  Halfway home, we were passed by Scott on the interstate.  I’m guessing he didn’t see much.

So we observed a wall cloud, some dramatic rotation, and beautiful structure shots.  Even grabbed some video but I don’t know when I’ll get that posted.

Miles covered: 236