5/22/2010 REPORTS SD

[John Wetter]

Had a great chase day on Saturday. Got several shots and video of the Bowdle, SD wedge and then a couple later tornadoes as well.

More pictures:
http://www.wxchaser.com/pages/photos/2010/052210/

 

[Terrence Cook]

What a day.

Left Indiana at Midnight last night,brought along a Ball State Met student... on his first plains chase! Sat out in the open country East of Alaska, SD for a few hours as towers started going and pretty much sat there until a tornado formed in the field next to us. So, we watched it from 250 yards as it hit a pond and skirted the road.

Then things got really crazy, ridiculous sculpting of the updraft by the most intense RFD I have ever witnessed.

I couldn't believe that we could see the wedge forming from 3-4 mi. South of the thing. AND it was moving slow enough that we managed to get ahead of it again.

And then the mothership got going on the next cycle, how we avoided giant hail I may never know... but with a vault like that and tough road options, I was quite nervous.

I love SD.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-fecMzXSnQ

I put a 6 minute clip on there. It's of course a lot chopped up. I also haven't watched it so not sure how much youtube fubar'd the quality. There's a bit of video info in the info/more section on there.

 

[Charles Kuster]

We also chased the very impressive Bowdle, SD supercell. Storms initially fired northwest of Gettysburg, SD near highway 83 and we watched the storm slowly organize from southeast Lowry, SD. It passed to our north and we moved quickly to highway 47 and approached the storm from the south. We first noticed a cone tornado at 6:14pm CDT to the west of highway 47. The tornado crossed the road at about 6:19pm CDT.

We then tried to reach highway 12, but the road was blocked. Unfortunately, this prevented us from catching the tornado as it approached Bowdle and we could not get in front of it again. We followed the storm, from behind, as it paralleled highway 12 and observed incredible motion and very strong RFD winds. Overall, it was a good day despite missing some of the show further east. There are some awesome images in this thread! Congrats to all who saw storms on Saturday!

Tornado just west of highway 47. Picture taken at 6:17pm CDT and is looking north northwest.

http://i48.tinypic.com/otq1dg.jpg (Tornado east of highway 47. Picture taken at about 6:20pm CDT and is looking north northeast.)

http://i45.tinypic.com/2eq5s9d.jpg (Wall cloud observed from position behind the storm. Picture taken at 6:28pm CDT from 1.3 miles south of highway 12 and is looking northeast. This is close to the time when the Bowdle wedge was occurring. Incredible motion could be seen at this time in the wall cloud.)

http://i50.tinypic.com/r2731c.jpg (Another picture from behind the storm, taken at 6:27pm CDT and is looking northeast.)

 

[Matt Chatelain]

Not much more to add... just an incredible chase day. Never thought I'd go on a chase and see so many different types of tornadoes from a single storm. Here is our video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp3BseKabUw

 

[Michael Stanga]

Had a great day along with everyone else in south dakota.

Heres a few pictures/video:

FULL chase account at : http://www.thewxpage.com/052210chase.html

FULL Video at http://www.thewxpage.com/stormchasingvideo2010.html 159Mb 1080p HD .WMV (Right Click once on the Tornado Below the 5/22/10 text and Click either "save link as.." or "save target as..." - I wouldn't recommend trying to buffer this video)

 

[Skip Talbot]

Just got my tornado footage from the robotic camera dome uploaded. I trimmed it down to ten minutes to fit in a single YouTube clip. Timelapse of the entire chase coming soon...

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Put up a time lapse of the maturation and tornadogenesis of the Bowdle, SD cell including the first EF2 tornado and then the destructive RFD winds that followed behind it. Just realized in reviewing my dash cam the aluminum out building actually coming apart in front of my car.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm4Sr-mpFU0

 

[Skip Talbot]

Three hours of chasing compressed into ten minutes. From towering cumulus to outflow dominant HP supercell, and several tornadoes in between, this is my May 22, 2010 timelapse video captured with the robotic camera dome.

 

[Josh VandenTop]

Wow what an amazing chase, showed up a little later than I would have liked, but I was thinking things would fire a little farther south, none the less it was still one of the best storms I've ever been on. It was really cool meeting other chasers and even some of the locals (we were invited to an open bar at the ramada,lol) Here is some of the video that I got from the southeast side of the storm. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1zljIoeWAs

 

[Mike Kovalchick]

Not much to add to what has already been a well documented storm.

Here's a video of the Bowdrie wedge just as it about to skirt the town:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS-CmtpPvb0

The storm was definately by far the best I've seen on my yearly chase vacations going back to the mid-1990's.

 

[Bob Hartig]

I finally processed my photos and just finished writing up a blog post. Don't feel like downloading more photos or writing more words. Suffice it to say that I'll never forget this chase. The storms were amazing, the ordeal in the field was first horrifying and then just plain miserable, and overall, May 22 is something I'm delighted to have experienced, though there's a part of it I would never want to relive.

Great photos, everyone!

 

[Adam Lucio]

Here it is, my account of the the insanity along with my perspective of the field incident:

http://www.aerostorms.com/052210-storm-chasers-stuck-in-a-field.php

 

[Kris Hair]

Lots of shots from underneath the storm... Here's what they looked like from another vantage point:

 

[Brett Roberts]

Not much to add, but figured I'd share the few shots I got that haven't already been replicated 10x by others. I had a great, close-up encounter with the first tornado as it crossed SD-47, but as a consequence was among the unlucky group who took too long to get N to US-12 to obtain a rain-free view of the wedge (thanks to SD-47 being blocked). The cone beneath a perfect mothership SW of Hosmer later on is a scene I'll never forget.

First tornado just W of SD-47:

E of SD-47 with vertical wall on the backside of the RFD:

Bowdle wedge from the SW (hey, at least it's a unique view ):

Cone SW of Hosmer:

Structure from near Hosmer after the cone, looking SW: