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.
Headed out at 1:30 after a last minute decision. The voices were telling me to head south. The cell in front of Chris’s was crossing 35 as I made it across the border so I went after that one. Looked pretty decent, was warned almost to the Wi border where it collapsed within a couple of scans. A nice wall cloud on it. Never did see any rotation or funnels though.
Dropped back to the cell behind that one which was still tor warned, looked nice on Radar, but looked pretty shelfish from the ground. Let that one go to as the cells were starting to merge together. Punched through the line and headed for home.
Played with streaming again today. Had problems with the connection dropping, but I suspect that had something to do with the fact I was moving in and out of Sprint territory down there.
Place Holder.
Another bust. Did try out cow cam though.
Chased the cells from St. Cloud through the Twin Cites, Hugo, and White Bear Lake.
Funnel just W of Big Lake. Just before it was wrapped in a hail curtain. There wasn’t much of the day I didn’t spend getting hailed on. Just couldn’t seem to get out of it. This was on the first cell.
Lowering near Forest Lake – 2nd cell (Thanks to Randy for the heads up on this one)
Lowering near White Bear Lake – 3rd cell
Had to do a quick trip to Menards this afternoon. On the way back I made a pass through the damaged area that was closed off to the public yesterday. A lot of roads still blocked so I walked in. Saw two garages destroyed, a lot of trees twisted and stripped of leaves. Same look in this neighborhood as two years ago when Blaine was hit just a mile and a half to the south of this track.
This used to be a garage of a house that was getting remodeled. Facing north, debris is off to the left, but unsure if it was pushed off that way to gain access to the back yard, or blew off that direction. No one was home when I was taking the picture.
A second garage.
Really disappointed when we woke up and find we were smack dab in the middle of two moderate risk areas. What happened to IA? After looking things over, it looked like MN was going to fire early, around 2pm or so, and I really didn’t want to make the dash for home just to be late by an hour or two, so opted to take advantage of the pool, and head into IA later to chase what looked like some pretty good conditions there.
We hung out at the hotel until checkout, then started off into IA, planning on driving 100 miles in or so, then re-evaluate based on current surface conditions. Within about an hour, MN looked like it may hold off long enough for us to get there, so we made a dash north, hoping for better winds, and a shorter trek home after the chase.
After hitting Jackson, we saw the cells starting to fire off to the north and decided to watch for a while to see if the line continued to the south. No such luck so we decided to head for Mankato, only to find out 169 is closed. There went our quick north road options,
By then the cells were firing in IA, and looked like they may be drifting to the NE, so we took off down 90 again playing catchup, only to re-evaluate once we hit Austin and realized the cells were taking a straight East route, putting us too far North on the already tornado warned cells in IA. We then turned north, thinking that the cells near Faribault may build into something…. which they didn’t. Very nice tower, but nothing to show for it underneath.
And then headed for home in practically clear skies all the way up 35. Pretty obvious then that the northern cells sucked up any moisture that would have fed anything in southern MN.
Once we got back to Blaine, we did a quick tour of the damage areas. Found damage from 121st and Hanson, (we didn’t check any further to the West, initial touchdown was supposed to have been a mile to the west?) and followed the damage path all the way to Radisson where we turned around and headed for home.
We saw various levels of damage along the way, a lot of full size trees pulled out by the roots, light house damage, and were told that houses were pulled off the foundations northwest of Jefferson and 117th. Lighter damage on the East side of 65, partially due to lack of trees? Full size swing sets tossed on their sides, some sides pulled off the sides of houses and garages, a lot of garage doors pushed in including some on East facing houses.
Both pictures below are from damage East of hwy 65.
A couple of 2×4′s in the side of a house. Garage to the left in the picture is to the East of me. Talking to one of the neighbors, the boards were sticking 3 ft into the neighbors living room.
A table? that was picked up and thrown into this house.
