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.
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