Day 18 - Last minute Missouri

THU 11 JUN

Original plan was to set our alarms at 4am and watch the severe thunderstorms move over our hotel at Omaha NE - so we did, though the most severe aspects (with 2 inch hail and a report of a tornado) stayed some ways to our south. After going back to sleep and waking at 10am, it looked like the resultant MCS that had carried on ploughing across Iowa was clearing eastwards quite quickly, allowing rapid destabilisation to occur to its rear. We needed to head back to Denver CO for our flight tomorrow, but the temptation to drive a couple of hours in the wrong direction to sample the unstable warm sector was too great, so we quickly left the hotel and drove to Des Moines IA, grabbed lunch, then headed south and east into Missouri (ugh) to try and get ahead of the advancing cold front. Numerous thunderstorms had developed along the frontal zone by this point, a few became tornado-warned and we managed to core-punch the Tail-End Charlie but couldn't see any circulation (would have been rain-wrapped in any case).

By late afternoon we had to leave the storms behind (they were lining out and rather messy anyway, though discrete supercells in the open warm sector over Illinois miles away to our east produced a number of significant and photogenic tornadoes)) to start our long journey west, so we drove for several hours into Kansas to our hotel at Hays KS - a quick stop at a travel centre in Salina KS to buy a few souvenirs.

Day 17 - Missouri frustration

WED 10 JUN

We had a fairly lengthy 6 hour drive to get into position today from our overnight stay in Brookings SD to a target of somewhere in N or NW Missouri. The overnight convection had pushed an outflow boundary farther south than models had generally suggested the day before, adding more time to our journey. We grabbed some lunch at Council Bluffs IA and then headed down I-29 into Missouri to try and catch a few fast-moving supercells (motions of 40+mph) with fairly early initiation, meaning we were often playing catch-up. The environment was ripe for tornadoes, but a lot of the storms were quite messy/HP so hard to get a good visual of any (mostly brief) tornadoes - certainly not helped by the poor chase terrain featuring lots of undulating hills and trees everywhere. A few tornadoes did occur (e.g. near Jamesport MO), but we couldn't see them from our position for the reasons mentioned above. 

All in all a frustrating chase day, and you just know if you could transpose these storms into e.g. Kansas it would have been a lot easier. I also had issues with my GPS not being in the right place on specific sections of roads, which I've never experienced before. Anyway, we ditched the storms by evening and heading back northwestwards to our hotel in Omaha NE, deliberately booked in the hope to catch some severe storms that were due to develop during the early hours of the morning (been a remarkably consistent signal in the models).

Day 16 - North Dakota bust

TUE 09 JUN

I don't think I've agonised so much over a chase target before - there were clearly various areas of interest today, including along the northward moving warm front over southern Canada, near the surface low in the northwest ND, upscaling linear slop along the cold front in western ND/SD, possibly something a bit more discrete in Nebraska (8 hour drive away from our starting point in Bismarck ND) and the slim chance something might fire along alone on a confluence zone straddling the northeast SD / southeast ND / western MN area. I had no interest in chasing in Canada again, and was mindful of where we needed to be tomorrow, so in the end we decided to gamble on the southeast ND risk area, with a remnant MCV travelling towards the area from Nebraska. After a brief hello to Norfolk residents Kathy and Phil who were chasing with Tempest Tours and happened to be staying in the same hotel as us, we headed east to Fargo ND, grabbing lunch in Jamestown ND, and the dropped south to Wahpeton ND where we sat mid-afternoon watching towers attempting to build to our SW. Sadly, once the MCV had overrun, convection became much less enthusiastic and we knew it was unlikely anything was going to happen (too much capping in the mid-levels). 

We tried to salvage something from the day by heading back west to Jamestown to perhaps see the evolving shelf cloud from the thunderstorms developing along the cold front well to the west (and moving eastwards), but even these storms were struggling to attain severe status - so in the end, we booked a hotel at Brookings SD and drove south and east for a few hours as the daylight faded. Soon after arriving at the hotel the line of storms to the west arrived, and became tornado warned to our north.

Day 15 - Travel day

MON 08 JUN

No storms to chase today, so we took the opportunity to leave Canada behind and head back into North Dakota to be in position for the following day. We bumped into fellow Brit chasers See Nature's Fury in Minot ND before arriving at our hotel in Bismarck ND at a markedly early time (for this trip!) of 18:30. After a quick bite to eat we headed to the local cinema to watch the new film Pressure, which was released in the US a week or so ago but not in the UK until September - an enjoyable film!

Day 14 - Canada

SUN 07 JUN

A first for me today - entered Canada as the best environment for supercells (and tornadoes) was north of the border. We targetted Kirkella MB, close to the Saskatchewan/Manitoba border and sat for several hours waiting for storms to initiate, sat directly underneath a stalled boundary. Towards 17:00 convection began to rapidly fire overhead and just to our south, producing a left and right split that raced away to the north, before a more organised supercell evolved to our south. We dropped down to Cromer MB and watched as a wall cloud began to form, and it felt like this supercell could be close to producing a tornado. However, after a while it began to lose a lot of its structure as it became outflow dominant and soon after completely shrivelled up and died.

Thereafter, there wasn't a huge amount of excitement - storms had all lined up on the frontal boundary and were largely outflow dominant. We tried to shimmy southwards down the line to areas of broader mid-level rotation, but they were clearly high-based and struggling. In the end we gave up chasing and drifted east to our hotel in Brandon MB.

Having never chased (or even visited) Canada before a few things stood out to me - the roads are, generally, in poorer condition than the equivalents in the US, many are unpaved or randomly become unpaved halfway down the road. Very few roads have shoulders. Phone signal is questionable in parts of the Prairies, and you can drive for a fair length of time without even coming across a petrol station. This, coupled with the poorly performing storms, made for a rather frustrating chase day.

Day 13 - Travel day

SAT 06 JUN

It looks like we need to be in Canada for tomorrow, so we had a long drive (11 hours) from Beatrice NE to Minot ND, stopping briefly for lunch in Sioux Falls SD and our first sit down meal of the trip in Applebees Jamestown ND. We reached our hotel at Minot very late in the evening, with numerous anvils to our north and west flashing away from storms that were in far W/NW North Dakota and/or across the border in Canada - so we still saw some lightning!

Day 12 - southern Nebraska

FRI 05 JUN

A 4 hour drive to our target of Grand Island NE, so we had a relaxed morning in Mitchell SD before hitting the road around noon and driving south into Nebraska, stopping in Norfolk NE for some lunch. We arrived in Grand Island early evening, by which time a thunderstorm had developed a long ways to our southwest on the Kansas border but seemed to be struggling.

We didn't have to wait long as new updraught towers were going up to both our SE along a stalled but marked W-E boundary, and also along an old cold front to the NW. Despite the convection to our N/NW attaining severe status more quickly, I felt the environment over SE Nebraska was more conducive to tornadogenesis if a discrete supercell could dominate. As such, we nudged progressively southwards and eastwards past Hastings NE to Geneva NE then on to Bruning NE and Daykin NE. Two main cells had developed by this time along this W-E boundary, the cell nearest us had a nice updraught but seemed to be struggling a little bit, whilst the cell to its east (hidden from view to us initially) was more robust on radar. This eastern cell soon became tornado-warned, based on a report of a funnel cloud, so we nudged 10-15 miles east and sat for an hour or two in almost the same spot watching this near-stationary cyclic supercell attempt numerous times to produce a tornado, whilst each new mesocyclone developed progressively farther to the west.

The structure on this storm by mid-late evening was incredible, and as darkness fell we nudged a bit further away to the south to try and take in the whole storm in front of us as lightning activity ramped up. As storms upstream started to grow upscale and make better progress southeastwards we decided to head to Beatrice NE where we'd booked our overnight stay, attempting to get there before the storms did. All in all, an enjoyable chase from a slow-moving/stationary cell and few chasers, which made it feel like you had the storm all to yourself!

Day 11 - South Dakota disappointment

THU 04 JUN

We started the day in Mitchell SD, with several potential targets - stay put in the hope for some evening thunderstorms to develop along a stalled W-E boundary to the north (but likely to upscale fairly quickly), head to NE Kansas where stronger low-level shear would favour a greater tornado risk albeit in a relatively skinny CAPE / weak deep layer wind shear environment, or drift west to the Black Hills and potentially catch some more discrete supercells drifting into W/SW South Dakota from Wymong. After much debating, we decided to choose the latter and drove 4 hours west along I-90 to Rapid City SD, briefly stopping at Firehenge along the way.

After lunching, we had a short walk around the Dinosaur Park in Rapid City, before nudging NW to Sturgis SD. By this stage the initial supercells in NE WY were upscaling and becoming rather poorly organised / only marginally-severe. After looking at surface observations / mesoanalysis we felt the environment was too capped and decided to haul back east on I-90 towards new convection along the stalled boundary in eastern SD. Naturally it took us several hours to reach this, with a nice low precip supercell near Chamberlain SD seemingly struggling to become sustained, but we eventually caught up with an outflow-dominant storm at Wessington Springs SD around sunset, which had a nice shelf cloud. We ended the night in exactly the same hotel in Mitchell SD, having driven for 9 hours (and filled up three times) for effectively one shelf cloud!

Day 10 - southern South Dakota

WED 03 JUN

We left our hotel in Rapid City SD reasonably earlier and targetted Pierre SD, as a round of elevated thunderstorms across the northern half of SD may be worth chasing as they became more surface-based by early afternoon. In the end they looked messy, and I preferred the environment over southern SD so we chilled in Pierre for a fair few hours, went for a nice walk along the river to stretch our legs a bit.

Towards late afternoon convection began to fire along the remnant cold front to our west and southwest, so to close the gap between various cells we drifted south to Vivian SD and then east to Presho SD. One cell became much better organised so it was back to Vivan SD then progressively south and east towards Winner SD as this discrete supercell thrived in its environment. The speed of rotation in the developing wall cloud was incredible, with impressive RFD cut too. As the storm crossed the highway we were on, a notable RFD surge occurred and shortly afterwards a tornado near Ideal SD - though since rain had wrapped around it was impossible to see from our vantage point.

We took the opportunity to reposition, through the town of Winner and out the other side and briefly caught a glimpse of a tornado roping out as the rain ceased. By this stage new cells had formed along the length of the cold front, and so began the upscaling into a linear mode. Nonetheless, this produced a fantastic shelf cloud that we parked up to enjoy as it approached us at sunset, amongst several other storm chasers also taking in the sights. As daylight started to fade we headed east and then north to a hotel in Mitchell SD, arriving in the town at roughly the same time as this line of thunderstorms did. All in all, happy with how today panned out and choices made - I think this was only tornadic storm of the day in the general chase area.

Day 9 - Western South Dakota

TUE 02 JUN

We were perhaps a little late leaving our hotel in Sidney NE, and had to drive a good 4 hours north to Rapid City SD to get close to today's target. We arrived around 14:00-15:00L, but had to drive through a bunch of messy convection over and to the east of the Black Hills - the extent of this hadn't been modelled particularly well, and in conjunction with extensive high cloud from the expanding anvil made me a little unsure if today would actually produce anything worth chasing. 

Still, after some lunch we nudged north to Newell SD where we bumped into other British chasers (See Nature's Fury and Weather Holidays) and chatted with them for a bit. By early evening, a few severe thunderstorms started to develop over the Black Hills and farther north across E/SE Montana, but these seemed to split quite quickly with left movers becoming the dominant cells as they raced northwards. We attempted to catch up with a couple of these west of Buffalo WY as the sun began to set, but eventually gave up and headed back to Rapid City SD to find a hotel for the night. All in all, a disappointing day, but nice to catch up with some fellow Brit chasers if nothing else!