No tornadoes over the last couple of days. That is not due to our failures though as there have been barely any touchdowns over the continental USA the last two days. What we were treated to however were two days of stunningly picturesque storms, and we have absolutely no idea how the second one didn’t produce a tornado considering the speed in which it was rotating.
Day 12
The trip took us north to South Dakota. The models had a bit of trouble predicting where the storms would fire and we found ourself going much further North than we had originally planned. The main storm eventually got started north of Rapid City, and so after much dallying round the Black Hills we caught up with it. (By the way you know you are storm chasing when you get within 5 miles of Mount Rushmore and don’t stop to take a look).
We were treated to a classic Supercell mothership, a slowly rotating, broad cloud base with extremely well defined sides. Just check out the pictures:
The mothership
Wrapping round
breathtaking
Aliens!
We ended the day in the town of Wall, South Dakota about 40 miles East of Rapid City.
Day 13
Day 13 was a long day and the storms fires so late we had pretty much already given up on them. We had a long journey back South East into central Nebraska, which took most of the day. Then at about 6:30pm we saw the telltale signs of a powerful storm.
Explosive convection
This one was strongly sheared and clearly rotating and we had high hopes of a tornado. Unfortunately it began to get dark quickly and the storm never produced, despite being tornado warned for about an hour. IT was an absolutely stunning storm. The rotating updraft was like nothing Tony or I had seen before. There was gorgeous lightning on this storm too. We have a couple of videos, which I will put on over the next couple of days that shows the intensity of the rotation and some of that lightning.
In the meantime you’ll have to make do with these snaps.
promising low cloud base
sunset to the west
Now that is a rotating storm!
Spinning top
Skies darken
We called it a day in Loup City in South Central Nebraska. Only one day to go!
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