May 25th, 2008

This was a very tough forecast, not the usual setup. Left my house on the north side of the Twin Cities around 11:20 to meet up with a couple people in Lakeville and head south from there. Ended up in Northfield which is only maybe an hour south from my house. Found a hot spot at a trucker stop and looked at models, surface obs, radar etc. for a good two hours till about 2:30 when we noticed storms firing around Willmar, MN. These storms looked like crap for a long time up until they were about 60 (or about 3:30-4:00 in the afternoon) miles west of Minneapolis, then they got their act together and started producing hail up to 3.5 inches in diameter. As they started moving more east than northeast they began getting hook echoes. Around 4:30 these storms produced a tornado in Blaine/Coon Rapids area (about 8-10 miles north of my house) and produced an EF3 tornado in Hugo (about 15 miles northeast of me). All this time we lost our internet connection and were clueless about the tornadic potential in the northern metro area, so we stayed south of the cities expecting any storm that fired to produce a tornado. Well, a storm finally did fire, but it didnt get warned until after it had crossed the river into Wisconsin and after i had given up on chasing it. All in all, it was a BUST, with storms hitting just north of me, but of course i wasnt at home, i was out "chasing" where i thought the "better" area was.

ironic, right? oh well, a short chase, shortest one to date actually, only 197 miles, so if i'm going to bust, i guess i would prefer to go the shortest distance to bust like what happened Sunday. It just seems like such a waste of a PDS tornado watch. Anyway, thoughts with the family who lost their son in the tornado in Hugo, and with the people affected by the monster tornado in northeast Iowa. Cant imagine what that would be like. Lastly, a couple pics, nothing great, just structure shots, but its all i have from Sunday: