[ morning update delayed because AT&T lies about their coverage in Lusk, WY]
9:00am – Gilbert and I are looking at data issues at CoD.
9:30am – Gilbert reports CoD has rebooted their firewalls (what they should have done 2 days ago) and now everything is working again.
10:00am – Paul is dancing around all excited about today. Doing the morning analysis breifing.
10:15am – On the road north. Newcastle, WY is target for lunch.
11:45am – In Newcastle at a Pizza Hut. 65+ year old staff + flash mob = crappy service. Gil reports all data is flowing now. Paul is doing more analysis. Still has a big grin on his face.
12:45pm – Tornado watch issued for Western SD. Can’t risk staying west with the black hills to our east. New target is Rapid City, SD. Ryan is driving like a bat out of hell!
1:45pm – Finally out of the black hills. I think Im going to yack (I’m in the back row of the van). Storm just went tornado warned, but the hills put us 30-40min behind the storm.
2:20pm – Storm has weak mid level rotation, but were 30miles back!
2:40pm – Almost on it! On the northern edge of the badlands now. Wish I had my Jeep 
beautiful country.
2:45pm – On the outflow boundary/rear flank now. Rounding the corner in a few minutes.
3:05pm – In position. has clear slot but not much low level rotation. bailing south for gas. then back at it.
3:15pm – Nice lowering but can’t pull together.
3:20pm – repositioning east for next cycle. Playing hop scotch with Roger Hill’s crew.
6:15pm – We’ve been in AT&T coverage hell so couldn’t make updates. Been chasing the same storm since the start. Almost in Valentine, NE now. Interesting structure but unable to pull together low level rotation.
7:35pm – In Valentine, NB for gas. Storm just won’t die. Roads suck to the south, we may be screwed.
Lost cell service at this point and the storm got huge. (afterwards the storm is known as the Valentine Beast) We took a bad direction and had to take back country roads to get back in front of the storm as it pushed down I-83. Once in front again, we got up close and personal with the inflow where wind was knocking people over with winds reported around 120mph. This time it was sucking air like there was no tomorrow. Later in the evening I see a post online where the SPC SigTor is an 11 for our area. (anything over 1 is good)
Paul saw the rear flank downdraft coming (unlike at least 3 other chasers we can see on radar who chose to stay for the 4″ hail) so we jumped in the vans and went south. At this point I had sand in my eyes and was effectively out of the chase. A few more short stops to look back at the structure and we called it a night as it was too dark. Chase ends at 9pm local.
Chasing for 624 miles and 8 hours today.
