Smiles, Sighs and Surprises

This weekend has been full of smiles, sighs ans surprises. What started off as a huge bust day on Friday due to a lack of moisture over southern Nebraska, and then a travel day on Saturday to Sioux City, led us to chasing today over South Dakota and northern Nebraska, and now our stay for the night in Grand Island, Nebraska. Lets start out with Saturday.

After a big bust Friday, we ended up staying at a pretty nice establishment in Abilene, Kansas. They had their fair share of amenities including a pool, hot tub, and a nice courtyard for yet another BSU Chase Team pick-up football game. We decided to leave a bit late, because this would primarily be a travel day to position ourselves for Sunday's good weather outlooks. We went north on some state roads, going through many small towns until we eventually passed through the capital city, Lincoln, Nebraska. We decided that this would be a good opportunity to grab a bite to eat, so Dr. Call recommended a local favorite, Valentino's. For only $7.29 or so, we had as much of the salad bar, pizza bar, chicken fingers, bread sticks and desserts that we could eat. Some of us, unfortunately, decided to eat way too much and felt bad for the next several miles, but nothing horrible ever came of it. We then made for Sioux City, Iowa, but first we passed through the small city of Wahoo, just for the sake of it's name.

Then, after the fair majority of the team, including myself went to bed, time appeared to fly by, and within no time, we arrived in Sioux City. We unloaded the vans and almost everyone decided to get some of their dirty laundry out of the way. I decided that this would indeed be a good idea, so I got some of my own stuff together and headed to the laundromat. About two hours later, we had a late dinner and turned it in for the night, because Sunday would be one of our best chase days, if not the best, for our trip.

I woke up today, Sunday, at around 9 this morning to the news that our hotel had more storm chasers than just ourselves. When I first heard that Reed Timmer and his crew, along with their Storm Intercept Vehicle, or SIV were parked out front, I didn't believe it. It had to be too good to be true, but I walked outside in my PJ's and a storm chasing t-shirt, and sure enough, my dreams came true. We knew at that point that we must have put ourselves in a good position if the professionals were also in the same area, nevertheless the same hotel. There was also an "Extreme Tornado Tours" group that stayed at our hotel the same evening. Though there would be no luck in any "touch-downs" today, there would be many promising sights and adventures instead.

We headed out at around 10 this morning, with the goal of heading west, to watch storms develop, and then travel back east with them to intercept any severe weather phenomena. On our way out, we constantly monitored our "Threat-Net" system and our other online sources. We started to get very disappointed rather quickly with the lack of dew point temperatures and moisture made us think back to the bust situation we faced on Friday. Although some of us tried to remain optimistic, the clear blue skies as far as the eye could see were not helping us, but it was early.

Around noon or maybe a bit later, we spotted some cloud growth on the horizon as we headed due west towards Winner, South Dakota. We stopped to monitor readings online and observe the clouds to see if there was any rapid changes taking place. Sure enough, we were witnessing the start of a busy afternoon. The clouds were rising at a great pace and soon busted through the cap and eventually formed into the classic anvil shape. We moved south a bit to catch up with the developing thunderstorms to our west. We stopped again shortly after to reshape out plans for intercepting and recorded more photos and movies. We chased the same cell for a few more hours and finally, after it appeared to weaken, we decided to go eat in Broken Bow, and call it a night. After our meal at McDonald's, we pulled out onto the road and noticed that to the east there was a strong looking storm with a well defined inflow tail, a characteristic of a severe storm. We quickly pulled up Threat-Net and and the team was once again in full chase mode. As we moved east on the southern end of the storm, we noticed that the storm had quite a bit of lightning, and was developing signs of wind shear, necessary to form tornadoes. But with our luck, daylight was quickly running out. After going down a dirt and gravel road, not ever recommended by the way, we decided to call off the chase and stopped at the top of a deserted, dirt driveway to take lightning photos and video footage from the storm. This video is of the chase down the dirt road towards the storm:


Soon after, we headed back with cloud to cloud lightning surrounding or vans to where I type this now, in Grand Island, Nebraska. I'm not sure why they call it Grand Island, but I would assume they have some kind of splendid island here of some sort, just a guess. Tomorrow is not looking too splendid, and we may head south. If we do chase it will be in Iowa and northern Missouri. We heard from a local that another storm chasing team is nearby in another town. I'm sure neither of us will know what we are going to do tomorrow for sure until we are actually doing it. As always, I thank you for reading, and on some boring or uneventful days, or even if we get back exceptionally late to a hotel, I might not post a blog, but the next evening I will fill you in on all of my adventures. Comments and suggestions are appreciated.

South Dakota - " Under God the People Rule" - Part II

Today, we again woke up in beautiful, boring Murdo, South Dakota. Our goal for the day was to intercept storms on the eastern half of South Dakota, with a pinpoint somewhere near Aberdeen, South Dakota, which is near the north east corner. It would be a somewhat easy drive to get there, and we weren't expecting storms to fire up until the mid to late afternoon. We enjoyed a somewhat laid back breakfast and our daily weather briefing and map analysis. We decided we would first stop by in Pierre to see the capital building and other local sites before jetting north and east to our predetermined target location.

After stopping for a quick photo session in South Dakota's capital, we were heading east when we saw storms beginning to fire on our on board laptop near the Nebraska and South Dakota border. We continued east, checked out models, used forecasting tools and plotted a route to Miller, SD, where we could then stop for a quick lunch and make any further decisions about the remainder of chasing today. Upon arriving in Miller, we at at Dairy Queen, which was the local hot spot apparently, and again looked at what the storms appeared to be doing. Today would be the best day we have had thus far for many reasons.

We ate as quickly as possible and made for the eastern fourth of South Dakota to finally get our chance to intercept some cells that began to pop up on radar and satellite images. We had put ourselves in the perfect position for these storms. When we finally got into the war zone, we cranked up the radio in van 2 and played the chasing favorite, Child in Time, by Deep Purple. It really got us into the chasing mentality as we approached building cumulonimbus clouds. We stopped once in an area near a field to view the building of a strong cell to our north and east. It was very impressive, with heavy precipitation and decibel readings on the radar. Unfortunately, we couldn't see much other than the underside so we made the choice to shoot south down some rough country roads in hopes to see more separated cells that we could see the towering tops of. We got lucky and pulled off a second time to witness a strong thunderstorm building with a clearly visible inflow tail, which had apparently not been seen before by a Ball State storm chasing class, and also many heavy rain bands. Still, we saw no real severe weather, and the storms were all eventually dissipating as they headed further north. We made our way east and made an emergency decision stop at a small ice cream parlor in the middle of nowhere. The locals seemed to be stressed upon our arrival in rain gear and fast exits from the vans. Upon further investigation, we found out that a few years back, the nearest town had been hit pretty bad by a tornado, so upon seeing us in chase mode, they feared the worst. We reassured them they appeared to only be in for heavy rain, and they relaxed just a bit. The storms were also weakening in the area and formed a squall line of sorts, so we made our way east to Mitchell, which was off of interstate 90 to hopefully enter a warm sector of air in hopes of finding more strong storms.

We got off the interstate and stopped in a Sinclair gas station where we would decide our next move. The choices were head north to continue with the gradually weaker storm systems, or just call it a day with great video footage and photographs. We all had seen enough, and decided to head back west towards Rapid City to stay the night, because the next few days or so would most likely be spent as tourists rather than chasers, and if we spent several days and came within 30 miles of seeing Mt. Rushmore and never visiting, that would just not seem right. So before leaving Mitchell, SD, I convinced everyone that we should check out their world famous "Corn Palace," just because it sounded like a really strange tourist destination, so why not. We arrived in the midst of a downpour with pea sized hail from the storms we chased earlier, and got a few photographs before leaving.

We stopped for dinner at "Al's Oasis," where for the second day in a row I decided to have the buffalo burger. It, again, tasted much like any other burger, but it is what it is. We soon departed after hopping onto some ceramic buffalo statues out front and made the last trek to Rapid City, South Dakota. That is where I am writing this tonight. We are staying at a very nice hotel with an indoor pool/slide that we tested out earlier this evening. Tomorrows plans are still up in the air, although I know almost for a guarantee that we will be visiting Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monument in progress. After that, the possibilities are endless. I thank you for taking the time to read and follow our storm chasing trip. Feel free to make comments, suggestions for tourist ideas, and whatnot. Thank you.