Day 16: Operation DRIVE!

Day 16:  Operation DRIVE

We left the hotel just after 7:00am.  We didn’t even have a morning meeting, we just got up and drove.  Storms were supposed to fire in eastern North Dakota early evening, and we had a long drive in order to reach out destination. 

It’s nice that we at least had an opportunity to see storms.  On Sunday we thought that we wouldn’t get to chase anything due to the Death-Ridge weather pattern, so we were glad that the pattern wasn’t as strong as we thought.  In fact, the risk for severe weather has been shifting slightly eastward with each day this week.  Yesterday we chased in Montana, today we would chase in North Dakota, and tomorrow we plan to chase in either Iowa or Wisconsin.  So it’s convenient that we can head east towards home while still continuing to chase.

Badlands of North Dakota.

The drive was long.  Honestly, I’m tired of being in the car.  Sleeping has become especially difficult because I can’t find a comfortable position anymore…  my back has gotten tired from sitting the same 5 ways I can sit in the car, so I can never fall asleep.  However, even dozing still passes the time.  I gave up on my knitting (go figure), and my ears can’t handle my marshmallow-earbuds for more than a few hours before they get sore.

We ate lunch in a little diner west of Bismarck, North Dakota.  Not gonna lie… it was cute, with its little retro style and vintage coke-machines.  However, I felt extremely disappointed when I ordered nachos and the waitress gave me a place with taco chips, beef, and all the toppings that looked EXACTLY like what I could have made at home for less than $2.  And I paid over $7 for that meal.  Not even quality ingredients…I was not impressed.

When we were west of Bismarck we stopped at a little gas station for a break, and we looked at the sky and noticed a storm forming just to our south.  We hung out there for a little while looking at the radar, and then decided to head south to chase it.

The storm continued to strengthen as we got close to it.  We were driving south and the storm was headed straight our way… we were trying to get to the south of it before it passed over top of us.  A little bit of rain wouldn’t bother us… it’s the hail-core and straight-line winds that we were worried about.  Our radar only refreshes every 6-7 minutes because that’s how long it takes for the Doppler to take several scans of the sky, and with every refresh the storm had picked up speed.  When I looked at the last scan that had the storm pretty much right-next to the road we were driving on, I knew we were in trouble.

First came the rain.  It was light at first, and we knew we had to keep moving in order to reach safety.  But then it started pounding, and we were in almost white-out conditions.  Over the radio we heard our leading van saying “We gotta pull over!  We gotta stop.”  So we pulled over onto the side of the road, flashers on, and hoped for the best.

Though I didn’t show it so much on the outside, I was actually freaking out.  I’ve never core-punched a storm before… we’ve always been trained to avoid the center core of a storm, since that’s where the hail and strong winds are.  If the hail is too big, our windows can smash through.  If the winds are too strong, our van can get tipped over.  And there we were… on the side of the road with nothing to do but take the blunt of the storm.  The winds were blowing perpendicular to the side of our van… and the hail was pounding on top of us.  Thankfully, the hail was only pea-sized.  And the winds couldn’t have been that strong… we survived without tipping.  The storm thankfully wasn’t strong enough to do us any major damage.

After that we had to take a loop…. Drive south,  then east, then back north to try and catch the storm again.  Unfortunately the storm was moving faster than we could get there… and by then the storm was weak enough that we decided it would be better to just move on and grab dinner.

I think by this point we were starting to get lazy with our storm chasing.  The storms that were popping up that day weren't that great, and so the natural instinct of the group was to give up if it didn't look like a tornado was going to appear.  I guess a lot of people just wanted to head eastward toward home.  Personally I was frustrated... as we continued to drive east another storm back behind us started to pop up.  I was the person monitoring the radar in the non-leading van, which was nice because for once I actually felt what I was doing, what I needed to look for.  A nice little storm popped up east of Bismarck, and I was waiting for us to turn around and chase it.  I even asked the chase leaders in the other van "What about this storm back behind us, are you looking at that?"  The response "Yeah, it sucks" really bothered me.  Even though all the elements needed for strong storms weren't there, it would still be nice to take a look at that storm's structure and whatnot.  However, that was the chase leader's decision and not ours.  While we ate dinner the storm became tornado-warned, so I guess we really lost out on that one.  I'm not sure if a tornado ever touched the ground or not, but it still would have been cool to see a funnel.

After dinner we saw a rainbow from a storm that had passed over us while we were eating.  The double-rainbow was pretty sweet.

We spent the night Fargo, Minnesota.  The plan is to drive southeast toward Wisconsin/Iowa.  If storms fire along the way, that's great.  The main point is to get home.