Wait a second... Minnesota?

Yup, that's the plan. But how'd we get here in the first place?

We're actually staying in Grand Forks, North Dakota, barely a mile from the Minnesota border. The day started early with us heading north through Madison and out of Wisconsin, then heading west with the initial hope of finding some storm action in South Dakota. We descended into the lush Mississippi River valley, then rose back out into the vast flatness that is southern Minnesota. In fact, everything was pretty freakin' flat from there on out. We took I-90 due west, then turned north on I-29 as the wimpy South Dakota storms petered out as the afternoon wore on. Not a lot happened after that. There was some more flatness, and two dudes on fast motorcycles who kept racing us on the highway. Well, they pretended to race us, at least, since we had no chance of ever catching them.

We had a little trouble finding a room in Great Forks. Apparently, the nearby University of North Dakota holds graduation tomorrow, so we had to call around for a long time before snagging the last room at the "C'mon Inn," which is actually really nice and has a cool indoor courtyard with waterfalls and plastic trees. The idea is to position ourselves equidistant from a few possible plays for tomorrow's storms: mainly, extreme northern Minnesota, and northeastern South Dakota. The SPC is calling for good stuff in Minnesota, but looking at the models I disagree with that forecast and see South Dakota as a more favorable region. We will see how things turn out when the new outlooks are posted tomorrow morning.

Here's a map that indicates our route so far and our nightly stops. We did about 700 miles today, bringing the total mileage in excess of 2,000 miles. Whoa.

Today would have been fantastic, if not for the extremely strong cap. All day, the skies were remniscent of what an "early morning" textbook storm day should look like. Altocumulus castellanas clouds were everywhere, indicating good instability trapped beneath a layer of stronger convective inhibition (the cap). The cap is just a layer of warm air aloft that inhibits vertical development of storms. On a good day, the cap would eventually break and allow storms to fire by mid-afternoon, but moisture was insufficiently shallow and the stupid cap was just too damn strong to let this happen, so the conditions did not improve as the day went on. Blech.

One last note: Montana is looking good for severe weather tomorrow, but we decided that Big Sky Country was just too distant, especially with a somewhat-decent setup in the upper Mississippi valley for the next two consecutive days. We'd never make it back east for Monday's storms in MI and WI if we went to Montana tomorrow.

Northern Minnesota, here we come!

"Yeah, we kinda ruled today..."

... said Jake, to sum up today's trek. We nearly doubled yesterday's mileage (roughly 450 miles), and put in about 800 miles today! We left around 7 AM and cautiously navigated the Pennsylvania fog, blowing by all the I-80 construction without a hitch. There were very few slowdowns after that. Interstate 80 became home as we cruised west, and mountains and forests gradually slipped into gently rolling fields and pastures.

We survived the roads of Ohio, and then sped through Indiana without even stopping for a break. Illinois was a little trafficky and more populated, because we were skirting the southern suburbs of Chicago. Finally, we turned north on I-39 and settled in to watch the golden sun slide below the horizon, turning wind farms and grain silos into sillhouettes. Now we're in Wisconsin just south of Madison, deciding on tomorrow's possibility for blasting west into South Dakota in time for storm initiation.

Yeah, it was a good day.

Partway there

Okay, so today didn't go exacly as planned. We made really good time until we ran into construction and lot of traffic on I-80W in Pennsylvania. We cut today's trip short and are staying at the Comfort Inn in New Columbia, PA.

We got to watch some fun little storms fire up in western MA, and tracked them on the XM WxWorx system. All you out folks there in readerland got to follow along, as well.

Going to go to sleep soon to get an early start tomorrow. Forecast is looking pretty consistent for Saturday and Sunday! Can't wait.

Chaser Positioning System

Well the car is locked down, wired up, and tricked out. Thanks to the amalgamation of several disparate technologies, you, the cyber-chaser, can now follow along in our misadventures. The patented Chaser Positioning System™ - CPS for short - provides real-time updates of location, speed, bearing, and position relative to storms. It will also have a near-real-time webcam feed from the car dashboard (provided I can fix the program that enables this feature during the car ride).

You can access the CPS here. A link is also available at the top of the navigation column to the right. ----->

Plan B

Okay, so here's the new plan. The fairly-recent 12Z GFS model run reveals some chase-worthy setups for Saturday and Sunday, and again later next week. That being the case, and assuming the windshield is replaced without any problems, we're going to head out Thursday morning.

Woo.

Oh well

So the windshield screwed us over for this week. The earliest I could get it replaced would be Tuesday, and by the time that happened and we drove west, the trough in the southern Plains which would have produced the severe weather would have passed. We could be on the road right now, but instead we'll have to wait for a few more days.

I will get the windshield replaced this week, and then we will look at the patterns next week for possibly some high Plains chasing next Wednesday, assuming sufficient moisture can get that far north.

Video: Curse of the Windshield