Seize the storm

The Road Runner and Me

Around noon, I saw that the cloud deck in Nebraska was eroding and would allow for a little more heating to occur.   With cells firing already in NE, I decided the strategy would be to go down to the SD border by Yankton and wait for them to come across the border.   I gave Nick Hartley a call and he climbed into the Baloo Mobile as the important navigator, data analyzer, and the ever important - second pair of eyes.   We finally got onto the first cell and had a wonderful view on a hilltop.   The wonderful view lasted for about a minute  - enough to snap two pictures and then think about what to do next.   By this time, the storm was gone, racing northward and away from us at 40-60 mph.   The next cell coming out of Nebraska looked awesome as the hook echo on the first was starting to fade.   We opted to stay behind, entrenching ourselves on the west side of the storm - the big and only mistake of the chase.

We watched and waited as the storm slowly drifted north.   We captured some pretty good pictures of a rotating wall cloud and supposed funnel.   I am always overly second guessing myself as to what I see and if it’s scud or something meaningful.   The plan was to let the storm pass and then head east to get behind it.   Sadly, there were some developing storms on the south side that kept us wondering if the storm was back-building.   We attempted to head east but recoiled due to heavy rain and low visibility - we weren’t about to throw ourselves headlong into a situation we weren’t prepared for.   Our data connection was spotty but even worse was the fact that the radar was already too old by the time we got it.   The storms had already moved at least 5-10 miles to the north as we got each new radar grab.

Finally, we got behind the storm but were racing to catch up with it.   I definitely felt like Wile E. Coyote on the rocket trying to keep up with the Road Runner.   We kept pursuing but could not grasp the prey.   A report would come over the radio of a tornado sited at this town and literally 5 minutes later, we would see a sign for that town.   Though we were going at least 20 mph faster than the storm, we could not keep up.   When it seemed like we were on the storm, a report came that it was still north of us.   After the chase, I could not believe Bill Doms’ pictures as we were right there, but saw nothing.   It was all about position and we had chosen the wrong point of entry into the chase.   All the way north, we were right behind it - Utica, Freeman, Bridgewater, Salem, Canova, Howard, Carthage, De Smet.   Looking back, I still think we might have been too far east.   Fortunately, we didn’t see much damage along the path that we did take.   We returned a frustrated bunch but grateful at least that there were tornadoes out there and it wasn’t a total bust.