June 6 TWISTEX Chase

Status: On-The-Road
Location: Ames, IA ~ Sioux Falls, SD

ISU Crew getting prepared to take off early this morning, yes it is now 4:45 am! Heading to central SD for the day, Moderate risk by the SPC has been issued for a large area of the northern plains. Not to much time to update, just check back throughout the day as updates will likely come in as we have time.

Chase Recap:

As stated, started off the day in Ames leaving at 5:30 am on our way to the target of Murdo, SD. Arrived in Murdo where we met up with Tim Samaras and the rest of our crew. We were quickly joined there by several other chase groups, including the DOW/ROTATE crew, Texas Tech, Twister Sisters, Silver Lining Tours and several others. Waited around there for quite a while until storm in Shannon/Bennett county went up and got going. Decided to head after that cell as it was tornado warned and tornado confirmed, but several problems with equipment held us up for a while. Did end up getting on this cell as it was going HP (high precipitation) to the southwest of Kadoka, SD. Very beautiful cell that was well contrasted really, good lowerings and showed good rotation on the leading edge of it for a while. Nice brief funnel before we had to take off to avoid getting overtook by the precip; which we played around with for nearly an hour and a half. Quite a few gustnadoes with the leading edge as well as we let it overtake us a couple of times, reading ~50 kt gusts on the mesonets. So playing with this line as many others did, it did produce one good tornado for ~30 minutes in its' beginning however as several other storms merged in with the storm it went mainly outflow and created a good wind/gustnado event.

Highlights for the day will include the nice HP cell southwest of Kadoka, SD; Several gustnadoes with the leading gust front; pea sized hail near Vivian, SD; and the very nice chaser convergence in Murdo, SD.

Spending the night in Sioux Falls, in which we should be arriving there by midnight. Looks like a chase target of eastern Iowa for tomorrow. Next update likely tomorrow sometime...

Total Miles: 775 Miles
Total Road/Chase Time: 19 Hours