Sunday 11th June - Tour 4/Day 3

Start Location: Willmar, Minnesota
End Location: Rapid City, South Dakota
States: Minnesota, South Dakota
Total States: 8
Distance: 508 miles

The chasing started early in Willmar with a Severe Storm with some indicated rotation that passed over the hotel at around 7am. What a lovely way to chase, opening the curtains and watching it out of the window.

I threw some clothes on over my pyjamas and wandered down to the Hotel lobby, as the storm was passing around the front of the hotel. I went outside to record some of the storm, but got fored back inside by strong winds and heavy rain!

I held the front (glass) door to the hotel lobby closed for 10 mins as it was not lockable and was being slammed about in the wind. The lightning and thunder was incredible to watch and a very pretty shelf cloud structure to go with it.

We had a nice proper breakfast in Perkins, which was next to the hotel, which was absolutely packed for a Sunday as some places had power out due to the storm.

Some of the roads out of Willmar had obviously suffered some damage from the storm that went over, with trees down and minor damage to buildings.

After Breakfast we headed south to SW Minnesota to see if any of the storms were going to break "the cap" - which is warm air in the upper atmosphere that can stop storms from forming. We bought some throw toys and bubbles to help pass the time and had some sandwiches for lunch from Jimmy Johns.

Around 5pm we called it and dashed West to Rapid City for the night to be closer to position for the storms forecast in Wyoming. All the ingredients are looking right for some good storms in East Wyoming / Western South Dakota the next day.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thursday 8th June - Arrival Day

Today is Tour 4 arrival day. Spent the morning watching the James Comey Testimony. Popped out for Jimmy Johns (delicious sandwiches) for lunch and to find a USB adaptor as my travel adaptor had died overnight, leaving me with uncharged devices and a flat powerbank. Not good. After lunch the rest of the "Bisons" as I'm now going to call them started arriving on their various flights from around the US. After a couple of hours of naps and freshening up we went out into the car park to sit in the sun (30 Degrees) and have a jolly good catch up session. It was a lovely afternoon catching up on Chaser gossip, chatting about what we'd been up to over the last 2/3 years and sharing stories. We have a mixture of original Tours 6 and 7 from 2014 on this trip, so in one way or another everyone knows everyone. No first night nerves or awkwardness. At 7pm we all met for dinner and went out to watch some SPORTS and had dinner and drinks (3 pomegranatinis for me). After dinner...
Read more

Monday 12th June - Tour 4 / Day 4

Image
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 "...
Read more