Chris White, David Drufke, and myself left for western Iowa around 10:30 AM this day with the intent of going between Sioux City and Omaha. We ended up heading between Sioux City and Sioux Falls and waiting in Akron, IA on the border of IA and SD at a river/creek crossing. A large cell popped up in SD that was moving due north and looked unorganized, so we stayed by the border waiting to more storms to fire along the boundary SEward towards us. After a while, with no new major new development, we decided it was time to go for a new one we had watched build up. On the way, it became apparent that this cell was not getting better while the original storm was exhibiting a hook. Around this time our radar quit working, so we were blind on a storm moving NNW in a strange orientation, with low level clouds flying everywhere. Due to this, I was rather nervous when all you know is that NWS radio mentions rotation 5 miles north of Parker, you're 5 miles north of Parker, with the crazy motion blob coming fast from the SE. Eventually I figured out the radar issue and by then our bearings were back, and we watched the storm produce little lowerings here and there until it started to die at I-90. I plan to check my GPS log with L2 data and my video timestamp to see exactly where we were.
Video of some crazy storm motions. About at the 45 second mark is the motion-iest:
Misc Pictures:
Abandoned passenger train near Superior, IA
Waiting on by the SD/IA border looking east. This cell area went on to produce the tornadoes in Lyon country about an hour later.
