What a day. We drove north out of North Platte Nebraska to Murdo South Dakota. Nice drive on 2 lane road most of the way with little or no traffic. Even managed to maintain digital cell phone coverage.
We arrived at the Super 8 Motel in Murdo about 3pm. Radar and all our other toys said that we would not have anything to chase until after about 6pm, so we laid low until then. I've attached a pic of some local transportation that we dubbed the hail catcher. One look inside and it seems that it has done that already.
I was across the street at the truck stop just before we left. I heard the staff talking about the weather and just how bad was it going to get. Apparently one of the young staff saw our chase vehicles and was now really worried about the weather and what should he do if a tornado comes. His partner told him to go run out back and hide.
One thing about Scott's Astro Van is that if we are running the AC to keep cool in the back, those in the front have their winter clothes on! ;) Scott attempted to put on a shell while driving without removing his seat belt. Not a good idea. He was so twisted up that we had to pull over so that he could get untwisted. Too funny!
At that point, we headed west along I90 until we intercepted a couple of large cells that took up at least 1/2 a county. Excellent view of some shelf clouds and we noticed at least half a dozen wall clouds. Pretty cool.
I took several time exposures with a 12mm (very wide angle) lens. The inflow was amazing and I'm guessing that it was at least 40 knots. It was pretty hard to keep the tripod stable while doing this despite putting all my body weight on it.
All todays shots can be found on my gallery at http://www.portcredit.net/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=14.
Tomorrow morning we are off to Oklahoma. Another 9 hour drive. As well, don't forget to check out Laura's blog at http://laurawx.blogspot.com.
Mike
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