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The series above shows a very classic tornado formation and
elephant trunk funnel. This one was fun to watch and we had a front row seat
when the needle end of the vortex shot to the ground. In the final shot the
tornado developed a helix configuration in the trunk of the funnel, then it
lifted off the ground.
These shots would be the last tornado of the day we would
photograph, but not the last one we saw. As I stated earlier the tornadoes were
getting closer to the rain, the one shown above was just to the south of the
vertical rain wall. After this tornado dissipated we drove east with twilight
turning to darkening skies. While traveling through Erwin I saw another
tornado, a large funnel buried in the rain. This tornado was south of Bryant,
although numerous trees kept us from getting a good view. I rattled off a few
still images while we were traveling to get into position, but it was too dark
for the camera to capture the event. This tornado was later listed in the Storm
Prediction Center's log which confirmed what were were seeing. Finally we lost
the low contrast tornado as it got buried in the rain.
Meanwhile new storms with tornado warnings were moving toward
our area from the southwest. Suddenly we realized the chase was over as the
NOAA Weather Radio screamed with more warning tones. There was a new threat of
tornadoes buried in the rain after dark, I wanted to get clear of the trees to
watch for trouble. We worked our way south through the high wind and intense
lightning of a couple of supercells. We reached Brookings then Sioux City where
tornado sirens were wailing in the darkness. As we cleared the most intense
supercells it begin to sink in, we had seen and photographed almost all of the
14 tornadoes that day. This was a new record for me and it was not set in
Kansas, but South Dakota.
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By now we were locked in with many other chasers
traveling down the highway, although some had stayed in the Manchester area to
gather equipment or still shocked by what they saw. We headed east and watched
a straight and narrow tornado hit the ground a few mile north of the highway.
We were traveling through an area of hills and trees making the storm shots a
bit more challenging then we got an opening to take the image on the right. For
some reason it didn't turn out very good though, but still good enough to show
the scene. Finally we reached the road north toward Spirit Lake which was east
of the tornado cyclone. As we traveled toward the storm we saw the churning
wall cloud off to our west-northwest. Were were again in good position to see
new tornadoes form. Quickly another tornado formed and sent up a debris cloud,
but this one didn't last very long. Then another tornado formed, this one
larger and it would put on a more typical performance like we had become
accustomed to seeing from this outrageous string of supercells. Still, it was
apparent this supercell was weaker than the previous storms. This huge and
almost overwhelming event was finally beginning to wind down.
