Well today was interesting to say the least. Our forecast was spot on for today, and there was a nice large tornado near Faith, SD. Unfortunately, we were about an hour away when it happened. By the time we got into position, the tornado-producing cell had turned into a cluster of cells that made it not worth even trying to intercept. We continued on north towards the North Dakota border to intercept a new cell that was looking very promising, but had to turn back when we ran into quarter-mile visibility heavy ground fog that was a result of the warm front crossing the boundry and the temperature dropped to match the dew points in the area. Giving up, we turned south to try and intercept some other cells that were moving north through South Dakota and then saw reports of a tornado report from the fog-shrouded cell we had just left.

At this point we decided to just continue south as far as possible and get in position for tomorrow's storms in Colorado and Wyoming. To add insult to injury, we got stuck on the only southbound road when we came across a construction site where they had dug up the entire road and we had to wait for a pilot truck to lead us through an off-road path south. Once we were clear of that, we ran into a one lane bridge that again required us to wait for a while before we could pass over it. By this time, the line of cells had come up to meet us and we had to pull off to wait while the gust front went past because it was pushing us off the road as we tried to make our way south. Once that ordeal was over, we were able to proceed fairly steadily down to North Platte, Nebraska, where we sit now in a Howard Johnson.

Kind of annoying to miss the best tornado of the day because we timed it wrong, but luckily the rest of the week is looking fairly good for storm development across Colorado and up toward Montana later on. Still no pictures though; we never had time to even get out of the car today...

Also, I was able to add the rest of the guys as authors to the blog, so look forward to updates from Neil, Chris, and Greg as well as myself.