Author: Doug

Severe storms impacted central Minnesota last night and early this morning with large hail and vivid lightning.  It was another great opportunity for a local chase.

While I was busy during the day and was not able to make it up north for the chase in the afternoon, I was able to make it up for the chase in the evening.  Before I made it to Brainerd, MN, the VIL or Vertically Integrated Liquid was in the extreme range on radar and it looked like I was in for some fun.   The down side was that it was going to happen after dark and no city or town would be in the path of the core.

In the image above, if you right click on it and view the full size version, you can see that a hail core with possible 4″ diameter hail was right on top of me.  Knowing the storm setups up here and this time of year, I doubted the radar data was accurate.   When the hail core hit, I was right, it was extremely heavy rain and golf ball sized hail.  Still pretty intense hail but not softball size. 

I played with this storm for a while and then drove home to Saint Cloud, MN where I waited for the next round of storms with some pretty vivid lightning.  The lightning in the video is pretty intense and looks great in real time in the footage.

What a insane chase day.  With Category One Hurricane Force Wind Speeds, the storm that I was on in Kingsburry County, South Dakota, it was one hell of a storm.   Footage of the severe storm that hit Kingsbury County, SD with a possible micro-burst or downdraft picking up a travel trailer across the road from me and throwing it over 50 feet into a farm field. There were no drag marks in the bean field.

Another great chase day where we saw 5 different tornado touch downs from the same location just south of Hawick, MN.  Not bad for someone that does not chase anymore according to others that think you have to chase all the garbage to be a real chaser when forecasting is the key to not wasting your time.  I think I earned a glass of the 18 year old The Macallan, that I’m sipping on now.  

Today started out where I had to take care of some things around home and at the office again so I got a late start but the target was in my back yard.  I was still at the office loading up gear when the first tornado warning was issued.  The storm was only 30 minutes to my west so it was just a matter of pick up the cameras from the house and hit the road.

I met up with the new kid, Riley just north of Green Lake and we headed to the east side of the lake to watch the storm since there are very few places in the area that have a decent view for chasing.   After seeing how the inflow was still surging into the storm and another updraft was moving north to the tornado warned storm, I told Riley we needed to move and we ended up in an area just south of Hawick, MN where I knew there was a spot we could park and see the storm and wait for it.   

A few minutes later we were watching this in the sky with an almost perfect view of the horizon considering the area was hills, trees and ponds.

Now we were in perfect position just south of Hawick, MN watching the wall cloud and meso with intense inflow and rotation a few miles to our north.  I know, why didn’t I get closer?  Simple answer is if you got closer you were stupid because of the tree’s and lack of visibility with this storm.  This storm required some distance from the meso to be safe and to see what was happening to get some decent footage and photographs.

It did not take long for the storm to pulse back to life and with in a few minutes, it dropped what I can confirm in the video, 4 new tornadoes near Hawick, MN.  They only lasted from a few seconds to a few minutes but it was an amazing sight if you were a chaser but I heard that a farm did take a hit from the storm. 

Here is the video from the chase. 

Here are some stills from the tornado.

It was a Red Sky In The Morning for the Twin Cities metro area as the drive in to town was filled with lightning and heavy rain. Once in town, commuters were dealing with the heavy rain on the Nicollet Mall.

Clip 1 Roof camera with lightning on Interstate 94.

Clip 2 Pre dawn with the red sky along with a rain shaft and flashes of lightning.

Clip 3 Pov shot on Interstate 94 with reddish orange sky and lightning

Clip 4 POV and lightning on side road near Big Lake (had to stop and get fuel on the way to Minneapolis).

Clip 5 – 8 Heavy rain on Interstate 94 after sunrise.

Clip 9 Minneapolis skyline on the Nicollet Mall in the rain.

Clip 10 People getting off a bus and opening up umbrellas.

Clip 11 Woman walking with an umbrella

Clip 12 Lots of people filling the camera view with umbrellas

Clip 13 Man standing with an umbrella while waiting to walk across the street.

Clip 14 People getting off a bus in the heavy rain and opening up umbrellas.

Clip 15 Man walking in the heavy rain with out an umbrella and has to cover his bag up with a garbage bag to keep it dry.

Clip 16 Biker in the rain.

Clip 17 Someone walking towards the camera in the heavy rain.

Clip 18 Biker in the rain.

Clip 19 One man puts a bag over his head while the other just stands in the rain and then someone walks up with an umbrella

Clip 20 Woman walking across the street towards the camera in the rain, with an umbrella.

Clip 21 People walking on Peavey Plaza in the rain with umbrellas.

Clip 22 – 23 Traffic in downtown Minneapolis in the rain.

Early this morning I was treated to another wonderful show of the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights.  Below is the video and the photos from what I was able to see.

Wow what a fun day of storm chasing on a great setup in a perfect chasing area in eastern South Dakota.  The only down side for the day was my late start from home since I was waiting on a part for the Jeep to fix the vacuum leak. 

Once the new purge solenoid was installed, I needed to take the truck on a long drive to test it out and what better way to test it than to storm chase?  I headed up to Sauk Centre and then west on 28 and then over towards Sisseton, SD.  What was incredible about this chase day was the visibility and how far I could see.  When I drove down Highway 28 into Glenwood, MN, I could see the storm forming in South Dakota.  When I looked at the map plotted my position to the storm, I was 80 miles away from it and I could still see the base of the storm. 

As soon as I crossed over the boarder into South Dakota, the storm became tornado warned and Nick and Amanda were already on the storm and said they were seeing large hail and incredible structure.  Being late for the show, I was not expecting to see such an intense updraft on the east side of the storm but this is what greeted me north of Sisseton. 

The photo is from my phone and the video and time lapse of this is just intense.  I waited around for a while and even talked to a man that lived just behind where I was parked and explained to him that he might be in for some hail but this storm was moving to the southeast and there was a very low chance of his farm getting hit by a tornado, while there was a better chance of the hail, high winds and heavy rain.

After leaving this area I ended up where there were a lot of other chasers on the south east side of the storm and saw that Nick and Amanda were on the west side of the storm avoiding the hail core.  Eric Whitehill and I passed each other on the road and talked briefly on the phone and Eric told me that he was avoiding the monster hail.  So seeing that this storm was not likely to produce a tornado and only be a hailer, I pulled a card ouf of the “Laubach Chaser Hand Book” and drove into the core.  At first I did not see any hail and turned around and headed back east.  Upon heading east and ending up back to where the chaser convergence was before, there was nobody around and now the baseballs started falling from the sky. 

The most intense part of the day was when Nick and Amanda stopped to say hi after the first hail core hit my truck and moved on.  We were checking out huge hail stones when all we heard was CRACK-BOOM and lightning struck a power pole about 100 yards away from us.  That was intense!!!  We ended up meeting up again just across the Minnesota state line to watch the vivid lightning show and wait out the storm moving off to the east so we did not have to drive in the rain to go home.

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.

Today was a warm up day to test out the gear before Sundays big chase day.   Here is the footage I shot just east of Saint Cloud, MN of the storms near Milaca, MN.

Today was one of those fun local chases where knowledge and skill was what was needed to navigate the rush hour traffic and road construction to anticipate where to be for the best or worst of the storm, depending on your perspective.  I pretty much played the north metro from Elk River / Anoka to Maple Grove and Plymouth.  I think there will be a lot of hail sales for cars in the next few weeks as a lot of people got stuck in the core on 494 in the north bound construction from  394 to the 94 split on the north side.  For the most part the hail was 3/4″ to Golf Ball sized with a few larger stones thrown in the mix to scare you when you hear the heavy THUD as it hits the roof of the truck.  I did have one problem today in the hail which is the GoPro stopped recording and then started back up, all on its own in the hail storm.  My guess is hail hit the start / stop button on the top of the camera and it shut off then turned back on after hail hit it again. 

Oh and for the idiot that can’t tell a “Lifted Jeep Grand Cherokee” with oversized tires from a Ford Escape, here you go. 

Get your eyes checked!  I don’t park in the lanes of traffic like that, EVER on primary roads and how the hell was I in front of you when I was over 2 miles east looking back west at the storm what looked more like a micro burst then what was reported as a tornado.

Today was fun. Woke up late but was well rested after finally getting 12 hours of sleep to chase an amazing storm in Richland County, ND.  

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Drove up to Richland County, ND and saw two amazing storms.  The first storm put down a bunch of golf ball sized hail and made the roads look like it just snowed. That storm weakened and moved off to the southeast and into western Minnesota to become a mega hail storm but never was tornado warned. I bailed on as it moved southeast of Wyndmere, ND.

I drove north for about 10 miles to the north on highway 18 and intercepted the next storm that was weakening but I had a feeling that it would regenerate and come back to life.  Boy did it ever come back to life as it rode the boundary to the east south east.  

On highway 18, once again I met up with Riley, who I met a few weeks ago near Benson, MN.  This time he had his girlfriend with him.  We chatted for a while and kept on chasing until we got on Interstate 29 and then he fell behind.  Was cool to see him and finally connect on Crackbook with him.  I was wondering what happened to him as I pulled off at the next exit waiting for them but turns out they had some car trouble and had to call off the chase.

As I kept on chasing after waiting a few minutes for Riley to catch up, I drove down Interstate 29 and knew the Red River would be an issue so I opted to head east on 11 towards Fairmount, ND.  I saw some chasers parked on the bridge over the interstate that almost became “Road Kill” by several vehicles.  If you are going to pull over to watch the storm, don’t do it in the lanes of traffic or on a restricted bridge with a lot of traffic.  Another SUV today was parked half way on the road in the lanes of traffic to take photos when there was plenty of space to pull off to the side of the road or in some driveway or farm field entrance. Every year the dumb ass parking on the road gets worse up here.

Here is the video, time to get some much needed sleep.