7/17/2010 REPORTS: MN/ND/SD/NE/IA

[Tyler Burg]

Couldn't chase today, I was keeping my eye on a supercell just southwest of st cloud, MN... It ended up holding together till just north of town, I'm walking out my door as it goes tornado warned again. As I got my first glimpse I couldn't believe the structure! Got to just SW of Watertown, MN for the first picture. From here it started to die, but still maintained some very cool structure. It was actually rotating pretty good but there was never a focused area of rotation, the public reported a tornado near watertown, but I couldn't see it from where I was, Could have happened though. There was an area of low contrast on the NE side that had a funnel shaped lowering for a bit, but being low contrast I couldn't tell if it was rotating - guessing that was the report. Followed it through St. Bonifacious where it started to completely fall apart. And by Victoria the updraft was completely gone. I've never seen a storm fall apart so fast.

Later a bow segment formed NW of town again and I blasted north as fast as I could, couldn't make it in time to get ahead of the apex, but did get into some 50-60mph winds and had a powerflash and pole snap 1 mile west of Delano, MN. It was a pretty fun day considering I only had to drive 70 miles!

 

[Dean Baron]

7/17/10 REPORTS: MN/SD/ND/NE

Had to work until 3:00, saw the stuff go up in the early afternoon out to the west. Kept an eye on it, was originally planning on heading up I94 towards the Sauk Centre area, but with a tornado warned storm not far to my west I decided to check it out first. Was not dissapointed.

Great strucutre as I got on the storm near Howard Lake, MN. These pictues were taken right about the time the tornado was reported near Kingston. I never saw it, but the structure was still cool.

Made the mistake of bailing on this storm in favor of getting west for round 2. Didnt take a pic the rest of the day. Oh well, hindsight is always 20/20.

EDIT: I KNEW we were gonna have a double post for the reports.

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

Caught this guy:

In far S ND, north of Aberdeen, SD. Storm had lots of potential, but was junked up once a storm went up along the right-rear flank. Had the best CG barrage I've seen so far this season.

Unfortunately, the expected failure mechanism prevailed today.

 

[Rob H]

The curse of the MN Moderate struck our car again. The initial target was Wheaton, MN, which was then shifted W and S when we saw the towers going up in SD. We could have driven 1 hour away and back home, and almost seen as much in the way of storms, and possibly some of the many "tornadoes" reported in the Twin Cities metro. Instead we drove several hundred miles again!

At 2pm, we intercepted a cell that formed literally right on top of us (near Osakis, MN) with amazing inflow. The inflow was so strong, it looked like it was pushing back any attempts by RFD to wrap around. We had a dirt road race away from the hail core which was an awesome way to end the season:

We then made our way to Wheaton, crossed the broder, and beat the big cell south to Watertown, SD where she gusted out very strongly and caused some flooding on the roads:

Tornado! No, wait.. just an a look alike worthy of a Skywarn class slide

On the way back we hung out under some intense rotation in Worthington, MN to see if we could get a glimpse of anything in the rain but to no avail. When we decided to leave and head home, the cell just in front of us quickly re-organized and had some very impressive shear and went tor warned. The local radio station in Spirit Lake, MN was talking about how there had been no confirmed tornadoes when all of a sudden they went off the air. Very creepy.

It's been a great year, but I think I'm ready to retire for next season. I am *not* letting another MN Moderate drag me out!

 

[Daniel Christianson]

Started in Watertown SD. then realized i needed to be north and just when i felt comfortable nope Dan has to go east... Wrong deal anyways, i let the first initial cells that developed and move southeast go. So i worked my way back up into MN south of Fergus Falls and heard the tornado watch get issued. When i saw storms already to the west i picked up the pace on some minimum maintience roads and away i went. Intercepted the cell mentioned above in Southeast ND, i was just west of Rutland ND and watched the storm do its thing then die off, shot video mostly. Wish i was on it earlier but a storm is a storm. The lightning was very frequent too, i then made my way home and heard all the ruckous going over Brookings SD and White. I tried to catch up which i did, but the cyclic storm had moved into MN but left with a great sunset op. The mammatus and the storms appearance was well worth it. Here's a couple pics and small vid caps.

 

[Josh VandenTop]

I followed the cell that started near Aberdeen and ended up working south and east. I ran into some quarter to golfball size hail just to the west of Groton and hurried back to the south and east to get out it(but not quick enough ended up with my first hail dent of the season) The south end of the storm was really moving, there was quite of bit of rotation. Ended up seeing a funnel to the east of Verdon,SD. Followed the storm where I saw some pretty bad hail damage, the largest stones I could find were around 2". All in all not a bad chase. Here is a link to the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBqqkKQVo5E

Here a couple of pics that I got.