Josh VandenTop
EF2
We started out targeting near Tyndall, SD and ended up waiting near Pickstown, SD. We watched the storms fire on radar in Nebraska and made the decision that we were going to stay in SD and wait for the storms to cross the river. We first intercepted a storm southwest of Avon, SD where we got some nice structure and eventually a possible brief tornado west of Avon (there appeared to be rotation above it). We then followed that storm for awhile and as it died out we stopped for a moment to decide what to do next, we were leaning toward going back to the border to wait for annother storm to cross but the storm to our north and west caught our eye. We caught it near Parkston and then worked on keeping out position on it, we ended up getting across the James river and headed north to Clayton where we got on an gravel road going east, this is where things happened for us. First a tornado formed just off the road to our north roughly a 1/2 mile away(unfortunately for me I apparently forgot to hit record so my video doesn't have this one, luckiy the other guys that were with did get some footage of it) as this was happening a very large tornado formed to our south. We tracked this one for several miles. Our gamble to stay north payed off big for us on this day, at one glance there were roughly half a dozen chasers that ended up near our storm. Here is some of the video I got from the day.Watch video >