Seize the storm

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.