Seize the storm

Yay, a storm!!!

For the lack of stormage around here lately, this came as a welcome relief from SDS (Storm Deprivation Syndrome) in June – JUNE OF ALL MONTHS.   Today is the average peak of tornadoes in South Dakota – at least we got something.   Started out in Brookings and watched the storms fire pretty quickly.   Amy and I got our stuff together, grabbed some Burger King and headed north to the Toronto exit where we took the right to Toronto and filled up with gas.   Should have been on full when we left Brookings but I had forgotten about that – whoops.   So that in part, contributed to us being in the storm as we followed it to the southeast.   Endless torrential rain and roaring pea to dime size hail escorted us to Hendricks, MN.

As we headed south on 271, we noticed a wind turbine that had one of the propellers snapped.   Part of it was flapping in the wind.   No debris was anywhere to be found.   We continued on south to Highway 14 and turned to head back home.   Pulled over on a gravel road to get the last few pictures, including the flowers.   It was a fun little chase and hey, it got the car clean.

Chasers, chasers, everywhere but no severe to tape

This was the first time where I’ve joined a convoy on a chase.   I met up with Rory Groves, developer of Swift Wx, and his wife  at Beresford, SD.    My wife and I  were invited to come along with he and a tour group.   One guy was a photographer for National Geographic from New Zealand.   He was trying to get lightning photography.   There was some CG but not too many and wasn’t too spectacular.

We went down to the Vermillion exit and stopped at a gas station for a while where I got the title shot.   It was a severe thunderstorm at this point but we were wondering why.   After a while, we went back a little north and headed over to Akron, IA following cells along the way.   We pull over and I get a bunch of more pictures.   Suddenly I see this black pickup roll by and I realize it’s Tim Samaras.   He’s the guy who drops the probes down in front of tornados.   Behind him, I see four or five cars in his entourage.   Then a little while later, I see a tan suburban go by and I wonder out loud to Rory if that was the Twister Sisters.   Rory thought Jon Davies might have went by as well.   It might have been him, but I’m not sure at all.

We take off again and drive through LeMars, IA – ice cream capital of the world, home of Wells Blue Bunny – absolutely the best dairy products EVER.   Again, we see Tim Samaras go by and Rory actually connects to his wireless internet?!?!   Yeah, he did.   It was pretty funny.   We exit on the east side of town and see who we think is the Twister Sisters pulled over on the side of the road.   Rory and I pull over to stop and say hi real quick.   Rory knows them better since he’s from the Twin Cities area and so are they.   So Amy and I got to meet them briefly and then continued on our way.   There were so many hog confinements in the area.   It smelled SO BAD!!

After heading east some more, we turn south to get ahead of a cell and were hoping it would strengthen a bit more.   It didn’t.   We went all the way south to Highway 20 and turned back to Sioux City.   We went by Moville where I quizzed Amy about why she should remember the Conoco there.   She finally got it – we spent 3 hours there a few years ago with another chaser who kept saying the cap was going to break in 45 minutes.   It never did, however there was a tornado watch issued.

So a star-studded chase with no tornadoes and only one report of hail in SD.   It wasn’t a total loss though – we had a great time getting to know some more of the chaser community.

Close but no cigar

Initial target was a line from Huron to Mitchell, preferring Huron.   My forecast hit right – a huge cell popped up around 3 pm and I was off to the races.   Since the storm motion was to the south-east, I elected to go down to Madison first and then cut ahead southeast of it somewhere.   Turns out I caught up to it near Fedora, SD.   It was tornado warned by this time and apparently had produced a rain-wrapped tornado but I’ve yet to see the storm report.   Followed the cell as it moved along and I stayed ahead of it the whole time.   I stopped every once in a while to get pictures and some video.   Saw a few funnels and an interesting wall cloud that I didn’t get a picture of at the time because I was driving…I might have got that on video, I’m not sure.

Crossed I-90 and was  chatting with my wife on the phone and had shot some more video and took some pictures when I thought I’d better move along to get another good position.   I got in the car and headed out…all of a sudden I hear this CLUNK, CLUNK, CLUNK.   I knew exactly what it was.   Stupid me…I pulled a major dum-dum.   I looked in my rear view mirror and there was my video camera, battery bouncing across the pavement and the camera sitting there.   I pulled over, ran back and picked it up.   Now it’s back to it’s “Dew Detected” status that I had a few months ago.   So basically I’m now without a MiniDV camera.   Fortunately, I still can use my wife’s video camera – provided I don’t pull a dum-dum again.   It was a valuable lesson.   I’m sure rethinking about getting that $2000 video camera…matter of fact, I don’t think I’ll be getting it now.   I just can’t risk making that mistake again.

Shortly after this, I saw a tour group with a lead car that had a license plate with EYEWALL on it.   Don’t know what group it was as there wasn’t any other decals that I could see.   Tried a little searching on the internet for the license plate but no dice there.

On the way back, I swang by a local TV station to see if they wanted some video.   They had no way to pull off the video from a MiniDV tape.   They had expected me to bring the necessary parts to extract the video.   Rather ridiculous if you ask me – they should have that kind of equipment on hand.   Oh well…I went home.

One funny thing I noticed on the way home was when I turned off the interstate.   I don’t know what the heck was going on but Delorme plotted my car as if it flew off the off-ramp and I made this nice wide turn and landed back on the road.   The picture is below.

Miles covered: 214.6
Mileage: 24.6 mpg