Life Under the Shelf cloud

Well, we made the right decision by not heading north. SPC showed the greatest tornado risk in South Dakota and southern North Dakota. But logistically that was a long drive, and keeping up with storms moving north at 50 knots would have been nearly impossible. Today was a day where chasing anywhere was unrealistic. We knew we were planning on getting rolled by a line of storms late in the day which we did do.
Instead we decided to chase near our hotel where a line/derecho of storms had a chance of passing late in the day. The system never quite came together as we would have hoped, but we still got some amazing pictures as the line came towards us with a nice shelf cloud. We also got a good wall cloud early in the day with a strong updraft core above. The winds were around 35 mph for most of the day even when there were not storms. This was enough to blow dust in our eyes and blow hats off our heads.

Today was the last day of pure chasing. Tomorrow we will be heading on our way home. If we see some storms in Iowa on our way we might chase, but if not we will just go to our hotel and have a nice sit down dinner with everyone.

This has been a great trip with a slight risk at least every day. Last year there was only 1 slight risk for the whole 11 days. I was so happy to have a better chase this year. It was well worth it.

By the way, the two tornadoes we did see on the chase were rated EF0 in oklahoma. And the wedge in South Dakota was a destructive EF4 tornado. Unfortunately, we were not able to get good pictures of this tornado near Bowdle, SD because it was rain wrapped.