13/14 June 2018 - Can I Have Eight Coffees to go?

Tour 6 – Day Three/Four

A thunderstorm woke me at four in the morning and it was followed by strong winds. My mind wanted to get up and look but my body just rolled over and went back to sleep.

We had our orientation at 9:30 and Bill was split on two possible target areas with the day after tomorrow looking good all the way into Saskatchewan and Manitoba. However, to get that far, it would mean blowing off potential storms in Nebraska area. He decided to just head north and decide along the way.

After a stop at Safeway, we headed north and indications started to favour targeting the Nebraska storms today. The potential storms tomorrow favoured the Dakotas as the systems in Canada looked to be a type that would move too fast to chase.

Lunch was at a typical mom-n-pop diner called Lucy’s Place in Segwick, Colorado.

It was the first time I sat at a counter for a meal.

It was a basic burger and fries you’d expect from a diner.

The reading material at the counter was interesting.

And you could get the second largest cinnamon bun I’d ever seen.

We made a quick pit stop near Ogallala only to find there was a Cinnabon there. They had even larger buns.

We turned north at Ogallala and headed directly for some forming storms. We went back and forth but nothing took hold. With the high chances of good storms in North Dakota, and possibly Canada, they decided to get some of that distance behind us now. We made one stop at sunset to stretch our legs and get some pics of the Badlands topography.

We got to the Budget Host in Kadoka, South Dakota by 8:30.

Here, we met up with Chris who would take over for Bill for a few days while he went back to work for the weekend.

The next morning, we got on the road at an early 6:30 looking to get to northern North Dakota by early afternoon. It didn’t take long for it to get really quiet in the back.

There was an enhanced risk in northern North Dakota and Canada and we heard that another chaser had said the chances for tornadoes was so high, his mother could go for a walk and find one.

We would hold him to that.

We drove for hours along straight roads with nothing but grass in sight as far as the eye could see.

At one point, we were slowed by a truck, and our driver, Bill, stuck his head out the window and said hello to four cows on the side of the road – interrupting their morning grazing.

Yeah, driving on long straight roads with nothing but cows, grass and slow oversized trucks can be exciting. We stopped for a quick lunch in Dickinson and then headed north to Williston, losing an hour as we passed into central time.

There was a large storm passing along the border with Canada but it was moving very fast and was out of our reach. We stopped by the road a couple times waiting for something to blow up along a boundary line that was just to our east. There was nothing for almost an hour and then the sky started to erupt with storms.

We had a choice of several and stopped at a pullout near Stanley to watch one with a low base churn.

The most fascinating thing about this time lapse is that you can see the clouds change direction. At first, they’re moving towards us and then the storm starts pulling them into the centre where a wall cloud starts to form.

While we were setting up, a small plane flew close to the storm. It appeared much too close for a normal flight and someone surmised it was trying to kill the storm.

There is a place in North Dakota called the North Dakota Weather Modification Service. Some use it as “proof” of chemtrails but they actually just seed the local storms to help prevent hail which can destroy crops.

The storm looked like it came very close to dropping a tornado just as the property owner came along and told us to leave.

We continued east through some light hail. The storm we were watching started to fade, but we had a choice of several other storms and one to the south got warned.

And then the plane passed over us again.

So, we booted it south across the lake and to the west, stopping just before sunset which wasn’t until just before ten.

We got some lightning with the storm but it wasn’t consistent enough to stick with it. We didn’t see the other chaser’s mother on the side of the road at any point.