A HUGE day! Severe weather parameters proclaimed “all storm chasers shall place themselves in front the South Dakota surface low!” It was an easy forecast. If an updraft could break through the cap somewhere between Mobridge and Aberdeen, then tornadoes would be a dime a dozen. And the cap—she was perfect! A long-lived beast of a tornadic supercell graced the countryside near Bowdle, SD. Heck, everything was perfect—the timing, the road network, the slow storm motion, the visibility, the flat farmland—this was the show of the season for sure!
This was also the arrival day in OKC for our group, Tempest Tours/Tour 4. We had the orientation around 1 p.m., as usual, and quickly hit the road north and west towards western Kansas. By 5 or 6 p.m. we were near the KS/OK border, somewhere north of Woodward, under bright blue skies. On the laptop computer, the radar display showed the Bowdle storm as a perfectly shaped supercell, and the shear values increased with every update it seemed! Tornado warnings and confirmed tornadoes and large and violent wording and so on and on and on and on and on and on and on and it was such a hoot! Chasers surrounded the storm according to the spotter network —- we were so happy for all of them.
As the first of many tornadoes initiated near Bowdle, SD, we stopped around Sitka, KS, to poke around some old structures. In the image below, you can sense the satisfaction in Brian Morganti’s mood, having moments prior photographed an abandoned house, one of his favorite pastimes, during a very strong phase of the South Dakota storm.
In Sitka, I revisited the famous (in-my-own-mind) dilapidated home which may have belonged to a Kansas family way back in the Dust Bowl Days! As I reminisced and took some stills, I stopped to think about the concurrent massive tornadic supercell in South Dakota that was probably kicking up dust. Beneath a bowl-shaped lowering.
During the massive wedge stage of the SD tornado, I positioned myself above this hole in the ground next to the fallen house. I shot two stills and made sure to steady myself against the nearly calm winds. There is a toilet in the hole, which might be used as a metaphor for our chase situation. I used a wide angle lens in order to afford a full structure view. One can get a good sense for the circular look to the bricks around the hole. There was no obvious rotation, but then again I only watched for a minute or two.
Our fun group posed for photographs at Sitka. There may have been more than one tornado on the ground with the South Dakota storm at this moment. I am not certain. Who cares?! We were on a storm chase tour and we were in Kansas!
The group photos were taken in front of the Sitka grain elevator, with the tornadic supercell in northeastern South Dakota well behind the structure. The curvature of the earth prevented a view of the storm.
On our way to Dodge City for the night, we stopped at the hand-dug well in Greensburg. This provided an opportunity to bury ourselves, but we didn’t think of it at the time. The South Dakota storm had been in progress for hours and hours, and was bearing down on a bunch of chasers who wound up on a road that ended. The chasers had to drive through a farmer’s field in order to avoid extremely unpleasant conditions. Meanwhile, in this photo, I am looking mostly to the south-southeast. Visibility is excellent and you can see that the fake tornado is not impacting the building. It remained stationary during our stay at the hand-dug well, perhaps because the mother cyclone had become unattached. I bet that no one in South Dakota observed a fake tornado and a hand-dug well on the same day. Our group remained on reliable roads to Dodge.
Summary: I am fairly pleased with the images that I took during the life-cycle of the Bowdle, SD, tornadic supercell. I got in good position to shoot the old house in Kansas and the well with the toilet and stayed safe. In the group shot, everyone smiled. Chasers often look back after an event to see where they messed up or should have done something differently, but on this day it should be fairly obvious that I nailed it and made no mistakes whatsoever. If only all chase days were like today.
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