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.
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