day 11/12: the last stand...
we ended up tonight in jeffersonville, ohio, in an attempt to get as close to home as possible. we drove during some nice looking storms in the illinois-indiana area, but they all either formed way ahead of us or behind us and nothing was looking good enough to chase (though a brief tornado did touch down in vermilion county, illinois, not too terribly long before we passed through it). today was not particularly interesting otherwise - we drove through a town in iowa that was hit by an f5 tornado last year (parkersburg), that has rebuilt surprisingly quickly - we drove through tons of new homes and businesses.
yesterday, we did chase for a while in south dakota - first targeting a storm out towards tripp county that was pretty downdraft-dominant by the time we reached it (though the wind was pretty awesome), then heading back east towards mitchell, where we watched a storm with an absolutely massive hail shaft that looked like a giant white cloud sitting on the ground. as it pulled away and weakened, a rainbow popped up in the hail shaft that later turned into a full arch that went over I-90 and back into a field on the other side. it's the first full rainbow i've seen in a long time, and against white and blue on one side and dark grey on the other, it looked amazing.
pictures tomorrow when i get home - another long day and we're leaving at 7 tomorrow - as if that weren't bad enough, we're back into eastern time, and so we're also losing an hour of sleep tonight.
i don't want the trip to be over - i want to keep going and going till there's no threat of severe weather in the midwest for a fair stretch of time. there's always next year though...
yesterday, we did chase for a while in south dakota - first targeting a storm out towards tripp county that was pretty downdraft-dominant by the time we reached it (though the wind was pretty awesome), then heading back east towards mitchell, where we watched a storm with an absolutely massive hail shaft that looked like a giant white cloud sitting on the ground. as it pulled away and weakened, a rainbow popped up in the hail shaft that later turned into a full arch that went over I-90 and back into a field on the other side. it's the first full rainbow i've seen in a long time, and against white and blue on one side and dark grey on the other, it looked amazing.
pictures tomorrow when i get home - another long day and we're leaving at 7 tomorrow - as if that weren't bad enough, we're back into eastern time, and so we're also losing an hour of sleep tonight.
i don't want the trip to be over - i want to keep going and going till there's no threat of severe weather in the midwest for a fair stretch of time. there's always next year though...