September 28 Hennepin County Minnesota

End of the season so you gotta take what you can get.  With an approaching pre-frontal trough, there was just enough surface heating to get some instability in place just west of the Minneapolis area.  About 3:15 I got myself into position ahead of the developing line hoping to see a fair shelf cloud.  Mother nature was able to provide a little better with this blocky non rotating wall cloud with a developing tail cloud about 3:25pm near the Baker Park Preserve in western Hennepin county.

This photo doesn't do justice as to how cool this looked.  All I had with was an 18mm lens so there was no way in this close I could get the whole thing.  This area is really hilly with a lot of trees so it was about the best positioning I could do considering.

This thing had a REALLY thick feeder but as the base stretched out with the linear winds it was quickly loosing the battle...or so I thought.

About this time I though for sure it was done as the outflow started to push in feeder band right under the updraft causing it to morph in to a more shelf-like feature.

Shelf cloud for sure now as I moved north with the cell.  I still had south-southeast winds at the surface so I figured I would give it a little more time.

As I passed the Hennepin county highway department garage the storm went back to thinking it was a supercell with an awesome stinger and tons of rapidly rising scud into the base.

At the intersection of Hennepin CR 118 and MN 55 I decided to go east then north again as I thought this cell was going to try to spin somehow.  I made a bad road choice at CR116 and decided to go north instead of going to CR101.  I got caught in the afternoon traffic and was quickly out of the game as the cell raced off to the northeast towards Maple Grove and Ramsey.  Still not a bad little storm considering the unidirectional wind fields and this late in September up here.

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