July 27, 2010: Avon, MN

I was surprised how long the southeasterly winds were hanging around this day, with winds from the SW being forecasted to have already moved in. We left at 3:30 PM for a target of only about 60-90 minutes away. Before I knew it the winds out west were quickly switching to SW or worse. We turned off at Avon to head north to where the surface winds were still mostly southerly. It was a gamble in bad chase terrain vs bad sfc winds further west.

We ended up by the couplet on the middle of the 3 tor warned storms, but there was a shelf in front of it and cold outflow. There was a lowing back there, but it had no movement and it was behind the emerging shelf.

At this point it was still pretty early, say 5 or 5:30 PM, and we headed down Hwy 10 to St Cloud to go home. Stopped in Howard Lake for dinner at a nice little place looking over the lake, and watched the storm come in again from across the lake while the locals scurried to get home before it hit.

We got some good rainbows and mammatus on the way back:

Day's risk area:

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- Tony Perkins