After another terrible night’s sleep we’re off early north
(no surprise there) for breakfast at Perkins Restaurant at Fort Pierre.
Rummaging in my case I find my rugby club’s polo shirt for today’s attire and,
coincidentally we’re headed for Rugby, North Dakota targeting a 5% tornado risk
and hoping for a “proper” chase day. With breakfast done we’re back on it
heading north on the good ol’ US 83.
We stop at Selby for provisions and for the first time on
this tour we have hot moist air carried on a decent wind on our backs. We pass
into North Dakota which I claim as my 19th state with dew points in
the mid 60s and the outside air temperature at 92f. All looking promising,
everything feels lovely and juicy…
By mid-afternoon we arrive in Rugby and have a late lunch at
Subway compromising with a foot long sandwich, half to eat in and half to go. There
are other chasers in the Subway, no doubt desperate for a weather fix after the
long ridge lay off. The other side of the road has a stone cairn declaring
Rugby to be the geographical centre of North America. Photo time, must put it
on the club website when I get home.
We wait around at a gas station as storms start to bubble up
in the target area to our west. There are lots of chasers waiting around
including Josh Wurman in DOW 8 (Doppler on Wheels). I’m sure I spot Karen
Kosiba as well.
We head off to Towner for our first storm which wasn’t that
explosive so target a new, more isolated cell south west of McClusky down US52 and
the most southerly available which quickly becomes severe warned only for us to be stopped by roadworks and a
15 minute delay. Reed Timmer and Dominator 3 is in front of us, does a u-turn ,
floors it and roars off back whence he’d come. I keep my old mukka Liam up to date
with proceedings back in the UK.
We arrive at Fessendon for a rapid pit stop then head west
towards Hurdsfield to get in front of the storm with options to drop south or
east with chase mode firmly engaged. Now in the perfect place, we drop south at
Hurdsfield on SR3 and get out with cameras in hand and a feeling of
expectation. Cloud 9 tours with Charles Edwards are a little further south but most
other chasers were elsewhere. A strong blast of warm, moist air was on our
backs screaming in to fuel our storm. The storm is quite high based with a wall
cloud and a pronounced hook echo on radar. With lots of CG lightning in our
vicinity it was slightly unnerving but worth the small risk to see huge dust
swirls on the ground under the wall cloud and chaotic turbulence and rotation
directly above us with the hail core close by. It felt like we were right under
it all. Very dramatic and it looked like it was about to produce a tornado
right in front of us. Lightning was all around us and with dust and rain
starting to obscure our view we headed further south.
Hook echoes and a small amount of obvious rotation came and
went but with a long drive to our hotel (well after 7 p.m. at this point) and
no immediate prospect of a tornado we dropped further south to pick up the I94
interstate at Medina and blasted east squeezing through a tight spot between
two storms being battered by strong winds, rain and half inch hail with a
couple of larger twangs on the Suburban.
The line of storms was moving east at a decent lick, around
45 mph and we eventually blasted through Jamestown, finally in front of it all.
We pulled off at exit 296 to watch the setting sun and lightning from the
overpass. Stunningly beautiful but proving very hard to get on top off despite
my best efforts, lots of fiddling with camera settings and work to do in
Photoshop to get a passing resemblance of what was in front of us. Here’s
hoping.
We set off again and with the sun going down, falling though
the precipitation free base and darkness not far away. I weak wall cloud was
visible and I joked that this would be the perfect time to see a tornado,
backlit by the sun still marvelling at the golden highlights in the lovely,
soft light.
With the apparent end of the day’s chasing we headed off to
our east with a long drive still in front of us to our north east to the Ramada
at Grande Forks, North Dakota.
Just as I was gazing sleepily into the near distance the
still severe warned storm (severe requires gusts of 50 kts plus or hail of 1”
plus) suddenly, and unexpectedly went tornado warned which I thought worth
mentioning to the crew…We immediately pulled off at exit 302 and sat atop the
overpass looking at a curious, quite dramatic but seemingly benign cloud dangling
below the base which we had spotted earlier. Reports were coming in of rotating
wall clouds and tornadoes on this storm. The wall cloud was rotating but the
scud like cloud beneath it didn’t appear to be; it was fairly dramatic
nevertheless. Perhaps chasers to our west with a different view may have
thought they were looking at a tornado or perhaps they really saw one, in any
event tornados had been called in.
We eventually stopped for food at Fargo. Fargo is a decent
sized city of nearly 250,000 population. Curiously neither the titular film nor
the TV series of the same name were actually filmed in Fargo. The Arby’s
conspiracy was in full flow as it had just shut as we arrived so we head off to Applebees,
a staple feeding station for storm chasers with normally decent fare. Still
full of several yards of Subway I order a French onion soup, just to be
sociable and a couple of beers just because I’m very thirsty. The “soup” when
it arrived consisted of a huge slap of chewy cheese on a lump of what I assume
was bread with a couple of teaspoons of liquid below. Revolting and inedible,
but that’s how it comes, the US’s take on classic world cuisine. I’m $20
lighter but too tired to care.
We head north into Grande Forks and arrive at our hotel at
1:00 a.m. I make a half decent fist of backing up photos and charging batteries
but the blog is beyond me so it will have to wait until the back of the SUV tomorrow (i.e. now) to
complete. That’s a shame as the WiFi is rapid with a couple of photos uploading
in seconds as opposed to several hours at the Super 8 in Murdo the previous
evening which just happens to be where we’ll be staying tonight. As it happens the Wifi is rapid tonight!
Total Miles: 766 (this is 7 shy of my Plains record from day
1 in 2006).
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