Monday 12th June - Tour 4 / Day 4

Start Location: Rapid City, South Dakota
End Location: Ogallala, Nebraska
States: South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska
Total States: 9
Distance: 578 miles

The hotel in Rapid City was really nice, attached to a water park, so it was sad to leave it behind without making proper use of the facilities.

We left early to drive the 3 hours towards Lusk/Wheatland in Wyoming, to get there in time for a quick Subway for lunch and by 2.30pm storms were already starting to initiate. This is really rather early for storms to start popping, but off we went!

We headed for a very good looking storm - "The Northern Storm" which was really moving with some impressive rotation on radar. We moved position a couple of times to get the best view, but road options in this part of Wyoming are limited at best. With the rain, the non-paved roads turn to mud soup so we had to abort a couple of options to try and stay out of the hail core.

We got back onto the interstate and happened upon some "Cricket Ball" size hail, that had taken out a cars windscreen, sunroof and back window.

As we tracked the storm the road options were getting very interesting, Shanda was doing an excellent job of keeping us on the road and out of the ditch in some places where the mud was just sticky and soupy.

We left the northern storm as it had tried to produce a tornado but just couldn't get organised so we raced to start tracking a very angry looking "Southern" Cell that had a history already of Tornadoes on the ground.

This cell was a lot more active, with an amazing lightning show and throwing out golf ball size hail as we punched through the storms core.

Up the top of a hill this cell really almost put a tornado down, but didn't quite get it done. It's the closest I've seen so far. A very convincing funnel cloud but not putting it down on the ground.

The cell was still very active and put on an amaing constant light show in the updraft to watch as it was getting dark. There were also some amazing Mammatus clouds. AKA Storm Boobies :) 

As we were starting to lose the light, we pulled into Alliance in Nebraska to get some dinner, before heading 2 hours east to Ogallala for the night. This puts us closer to eastern Nebraska which is where the next round of storms are likely to fire.

A fun but slightly disappointing day for me, as there were multiple tornadoes on the ground throughout the day but that's the luck of the draw in Sotrm chasing sometimes. Onto the next set. :)

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