ere are a couple of pictures. Doesn’t do this cell justice though. Like you guys, I wasn’t even paying attention to the weather until I saw this cell right out my living room. Was a lot nicer looking before it crossed 65, but was still obviously rotating by the time I caught up to it just east of 65 and main street.
Headed to Windom with Dean for what we hoped was going to be a big day. We were teased a couple of times with a few towers going up, only to watch them collapse and dry up almost immediately. Thought we were going to get a light show coming home as we watched lightning begin to light up the towers to the south of the cities, but the cloud to cloud became cg and too far below the horizon to see within about 5 minutes.
Day wasn’t a complete loss though. Did get buzzed by a crop duster. Mosquito’s didn’t bother us for the rest of the night…..
Took a long lunch at work to intercept a line of storms coming in from the west. Hail and high winds being the main threats. Made it down to Chaska before the line over ran me. Traffic was a pain, so ended up with the line running over me while I sat in traffic. High winds, a little pea size hail.
Drove to Iowa, got as close as the north side of the tornado warned cell that went through Mason City. Cells lined out and started to drift to the SE almost immediatly. Saw lots of flooding. Heard reports of up to 4 inches of rain from one of the cells with lots of road closures just East of Mason City.
Wrote off IA after that and headed back into southern MN. Cu field dried up as I drove north. Kept driving north until I hit the cell moving through Anoka County. Nothing impressive as far as structure. A lot of scud rising into the base and a shelf hanging off the front, but that was about it.
Did get an inch of rain in about 15 minutes from it…. as measured at my house(Blaine), and the porta potties and all the garbage cans were blown around at the NSC. Not sure what the official wind speed measurement is to blow a line of porta potties over. Some brief street flooding.
So….. 350 miles to once again have a cell go through my backyard.
Really thought we had a chance in IA yesterday. Even though the line died, it didn’t move all that much, so a nice relaxed day yesterday watching cells shoot up and die right over us. Out with Randy and Dean.
Towers begin to head up, bases darken and start to lower, towers collapse within about 10 minutes.
No question where the boundary is today.
This is what made it all worth while. 
A few roads even got wet.
