Yesterday I took on the opportunity to storm chase in Western Minnesota with a friend of mine from the region. I seen many experiences yesterday that were inspiring, worrysome, exciting and new. I left Rochester around 12pm and made it to Wasceca,MN around 1pm. I brought along a hand held wind gauge. We left for Western Minnesota around 2pm where we continued northwestward eventually taking short trips that lead us Northwest of Wilmar. Thunderstorms already had tornado warnings on them so we went for those cells, eventually we ended up west of Wilmar where we saw the above wall cloud.
In this storm besides the wall cloud we saw, we saw this rotating edge of clouds showing how vigorous the storm was. The storm did not drop a tornado where we were. What added interest to this experience was dhortly after I took this photo rear flank downdraft winds in excess of 41MPH hit us. What was odd about the experience was it was windy for a few seconds then it went calm, after the wind went calm we could hear the rough of the wind through the trees downwind of where we were.
This is a radar image from Chanhassen of the storm we were on just after we saw our event take place.
After the first cell moved east we got caught by the second very large and fast east moving squall line that hit us with torrential rains at 47MPH. After this the squall line had a strong hold of us as we tried to moved east to get out of it it followed us. We passed several towns with large branches covering the road. When we went through Cosmos,MN there was no power to the city. Eventually though we did get out of the storms just north of Fairfax just after dark.
We stuck around the countryside north of Fairfax as more warnings were being issued we decided to watch the storm push back in and in making that choice I saw the highest winds I've ever felt. The storm pushed in with force, first the gusts were around 41MPH. My friend and I were outside the car taking measurements. Then all of the sudden a very strong but short gust of wind hit us, pushing us both back into the car and sending my friends phone flying out of his hands and across the road in mid air without landing on the ground. After the short burst ended I looked at the gauge and was stunned to see it had read a 67MPH wind gust in that burst. I never felt wind like that and it will be an experience I will remember for years to come. All in all I had a great time and the chase was well worth the effort!
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