August 2nd Renville and McLeod Counties Minnesota

A rather odd chase as capping and the late arrival of a surface low out in eastern South Dakota sets off several severe supercells right at dark.

Melinda, Cailyn and I waited around the Stearns / Meeker county line watching a struggling surface boundary just to our south.  After watching the monster cell go up to our southwest near Marshall, MN, right at dark the boundary lit up as we moved south to get in front of the new cell which fired between Bird Island and Lake Lillian.

The cell briefly had a wall cloud as it approached the Renville and McLeod county lines.  I was somewhat concerned with a cell merger as the next supercell to the south had a history of producing baseball sized hail.  This cell also was showing the potential of producing baseballs so we decided to thread the needle between the cells and stay out of the core and  vault regions of both.

While making  a quick fuel stop in Hutchinson for gas, I took this pic looking east -southeast as the girls ran inside.

We headed east on highway 7 to be able to flank the storm but took a break in Silver Lake to take some more shots.  The next set of photos were all taken looking south over the lake.

After continuing east to the junctions of highways 7 and 25, we stopped to take to take a few last lightning shots as the cell was rapidly weakening as the number of CG's and CC's was declining.  However, I was intrigued by the possible opportunity to catch a shot of the moon and a CG in the same frame.  One of my chaser pals, Dick McGowan captured a beautiful image of this rare set up earlier this year.

While not nearly the quality and composition of Dick's shot, I was happy to at least have had the opportunity.  Maybe next time!  Overall, a good chase for being all in the dark.  Too bad as I'm sure these would have been some very pretty storms!

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