July 14th Brookings and Moody Counties South Dakota

The second most frustrating chase day of the year for me.  We sat near Cottonwood, MN watching the cell which went on to produce the Spicer, MN tornado initiate.   I didn't like the questionable instability near the warm front so decided to take the cold front to the west instead.  What a mistake.

This was the first time all year the three of us have gotten to chase together.   Despite missing the Spicer tornado, we still had a fun day and got on a fun storm.

Just outside of Brookings, SD, we were greeted by a nice shelf cloud which had us scurrying to get south and stay out of the precip.

Heading for Flandreau, SD.  The vil's on the cell were into the mid 70's at this time and I didn't feel like seeing if the 3" hail marker was going to verify.

Things got interesting for a bit as a new updraft area formed on the southwest side of the cell as it really started hauling off to the southeast.

We let the new updraft almost get right on top of us a little west of the Minnesota / South Dakota border.  As ominous as this looks, it is totally undercut and outflow driven dispite the curl on the left side.  I am 90% sure the cell got overtaken by the cold front and was actually running just behind it.

Cold outflow scud flying to the south / southeast out of the core.

My daughter battles the strong outflow.

We stayed with the storm to Slayton, MN and after an insteresting drive on highway 30 which peppered us with small hail and a lot of leaves stuck to the driver's side of the car, we headed north as the cold front pushed east leaving us with a nice view of rainbows all the way up to Willmar, MN.

This is actually a four photo panorama taken just west of Dassel, MN.  Wasn't the best chase day, but it wasn't the worst either. Best part was it turned out to be a  fun day and the kids and I had a blast.

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