We got our Sunday going with a nice morning convection show on the drive out to s/e South Dakota. We had seen some quite impressive hodographs and soundings for the day, so we were targeting the Sioux Falls to Watertown area. The day also started with an extremely impressive 15% hatched tornado setup, which seemed to be based more on the hodographs than perhaps the reality of the setup. Not to say we weren't stoked, because we were!
We started the drive with some nice morning convection - this was probably the most interesting set of little storms on a morning / early afternoon drive that I'd seen.
Who did we run in to, but my buddy Randy Hill, meteorologist and storm chaser from the Minneapolis area!
Everything can be fixed with duct tape... even the dome that likes to leak.
Locals Portrait #16:
Locals Portrait #17:
Right around this time we got a tornado watch.
It was fairly impressive with a 70% / 40% on the tornado probabilities!
And, there was our little shnib storm starting to grow. We were off!
One of my favorite images from the day...
Skip and the van (named Nebraska Jones) in front of the mammoth supercell:
A few minutes after this time / the photos above, our storm was tornado warned again, and though we were near it... any tornado would most likely be deeper in the core, which we had no interest of going for.
We moved on down the way southeast to some other cells and watched them go by as the sun was setting. We had the most unbelievable light with the sunset and a storm with a ragged wall cloud. If only a tornado would have dropped, it would have been the most perfect and beautiful light to photograph it. Unfortunately it just never happened.
Posts
