Today was one of those great chase days where everything line’s up and falls into place. Upon seeing the first storm fire and a lot of people get what I will call “Suckered” into chasing them up past Fergus Falls in the hills and trees when the second storm I was targeting near Wheaton, MN fired up. I talked to Amanda and Nick who were already in place up there for the cell that was firing and I just hanged back to cover the south side in case the southern cells on the South Dakota boarder fired up.
At 4:14 PM, this is what the cell near Wheaton, MN looked like as I was heading towards it.
After making the decision to bail on the southern storms in South Dakota since I was 25 miles from the Wilkin County, storm. I headed up highway 9. In just over 20 minutes the storm grew from a small updraft to a full supercell that was all alone and on the warm front.
After driving another 15 minutes to the northwest, I was watching a perfect wall cloud in the distance and could see the area of rotation.
Soon it looked like this.
Ok so it Split The Uprights… The tornado lasted about a minute but it was not the only tornado of the day. The hail was not as large as the VIL (Vertically Integrated Liquid) was saying it was since all of the radar’s from the National Weather Service were over 100 miles away and the area is a major radar hole for any data. Yes, that is correct, the Aberdeen, SD, Grand Forks, ND, and Minneapolis, MN radars are all over 100 miles away from the tornadoes today. NOAA really needs to install a radar site up in Alexandria, MN to fill in the gap.
Ok, enough with my views on poor government planning and lack of radar data. I pretty much went off visual data today since I knew the area has the worst data coverage.
Here is the video from today.
And I’m starting a New Tradition. For many year’s it has been a tradition to have a steak dinner after every successful storm chase. I’m bored with that tradition so I’m starting a new one. After every successful storm chase where I go out to see a tornado and I see a tornado, I’m not going to eat a steak dinner. I’ll eat what I want to eat and drink a fine glass of The MaCallan 18. I can get a steak and cook a steak anytime I want but The MaCallan 18 is something that is only for special occasions.
