Long chase north...

Day 7 - 3rd June

Today's target is South Central South Dakota with a good chance of seeing supercell storms, but it will be a long drive from Kansas.

We head north on the 183 through Stockton and on into Nebraska and I chomp on banana hoping it will mitigate the worst excesses of the fast food diet. We stop near the I80 at Elm Creek and I share a pepperoni pizza with Ratty which makes a change from the usual burger. We continue north and stop at Bassett towards the South Dakota border where I have a Good Humour ice cream and an iced coffee drink not realising that the drink alone contains 340 calories...Crap!

We set off and are flagged down by a Swiss chaser (I believe to be Olivier Staiger http://www.klipsi.ch) who wants to say hello. We then stop in Gregory and resist the temptation to visit the "Historic Downtown Gregory".

We continue north and cross the Missouri then go east on the 44. An isolated storm has bubbled up and is a likely supercell. We stop and take some photographs and move on. The next stop is by a small cemetery filled with generations of Scandinavian settlers and chat to a couple who are visiting. I'm sure they already have their plots booked.



The storm we were on starts to recede but there is another one 30 miles behind it coming our way which looks promising and sure enough, at 19:00 as we pass through Armour the supercell becomes tornado warned.

We head East, but this is fraught with disappointment because the road system is not great and the storm is tracking along the Missouri and bridges are in short supply.

We head south on the 37 and cross back over the Missouri then turn east on the 12 and eventually get ahead of the storm. By now it had split into two and we were chasing the right hand part. We charge to higher ground and get some great structure shots, then move on and get some more across a field of cows who seam none plussed by our presence.



The light is closing in so we head north to Yankton on the 81 through torrential rain and lightning. We pass a nice looking steak house and drive right in...to Burger King. I don't eat this stuff at home and can't face any more burgers so have ribs instead. We finish eating and go outside to watch some frenetic lightning before heading off to the Super 8 for the night. Yet again, by coincidence, I stayed in Yankton on the 2008 trip on the same Thursday.

It's an early finish - it's only 00:15 as I finish writing this up and we won't be setting off until after 10:30 tomorrow. I suspect we'll be chasing not far away tomorrow. I'm looking forward to a decent sleep.
















Total miles 525