Sub-par storms sapping spirit

Much like our frustrations, the storms have been building this trip. But unfortunately like our storms, our plans to see tornadoes are becoming a right mess. The lightning shows are little consolation. If I spend another five days here without seeing a tornado, I don't know how I will be able to come home. How can you come half way across the world to the home of tornadoes, twice, and not see anything.  It can't happen. Surely.

It's just hard to keep going on these long days. Today we drove seven hours to be frustrated by several more hours of chasing before being let down again. U guess at least last time we got to see some sights. This time I've been able to meet a few more nice people, and go into a few more states of the US. You'd be hard pressed to find a mid-west  state I haven't been too now. I guess that's something. I wish I didn't have to go half way across the world to do it. But I guess it means I can chase storms in Brisbane and have the same luck!

Despite our disappointments, I'll take you through the highlights of the past few days. After spending the night in St Cloud (which was a pretty rowdy night for some of the others)  it was windy, and rain and cold outside our hotel alongside the Mississippi River. I had a good chat to Reed Timmer, the navigator of Dominator 2, and was able to hold an intelligent weather conversation with him! I guess I half know what I'm talking about then. He's keen to go tropical cyclone chasing in Australia sometime. We both were of the feeling we had to go south towards Sioux Falls, South Dakota as soon as possible! We got there within about an hour of storms starting, and conditions were quite hot (think 30 and humid) compared to St Cloud earlier (13, wet and windy). Perfect conditions for storms... or so we thought. The storms were choked off from accessing the surface moisture and died. I think we all died a little inside too. Our chase didn't finish until about 10pm (the sun was still up) so decided to make a quick trip to Sioux City, Iowa. Funnily enough, the previous day's birthday girl Shanda (whose family joined in our dinner at the hotel in St Cloud) LIVES in Sioux City so she got to sleep in her own bed. Lucky!

My pics from the day:

Oh a storm is raging... not so much

Sunset storm... kind of

The sun sets on another below-average chase day

Today was a 50-50 choice between Minnesota and Nebraska. All weather models were pointing to the northern target as our best shot. We made the drive, arrived well in time and chased an isolated but growing storm, which looked promising. Unfortunately, it died and we chased a slow-moving MASSIVE supercell, which had tornado warnings on it. It was the only storm to chase, but having the high-precipitation storm 'stop and drop' (new term, coined by me) was inevitable, sadly. It cause some major flooding in Minnesota. It just did not stop. There weren't any tornadoes in Nebraska either, so at least that couldn't bring us down. We lobbed into our hotel at White Bear Lake, outside of St Paul, Minnesota just before midnight.

Our guides Dave Holder and Blake Knapp like most chasers, attempting to find out why our storms keep screwing us around.

On approach to the monster storm

The monster fizzer on radar, with tornado warnings

Stormchasing is off the radar for tomorrow as we head back east and south towards Nebraska and the following day we're hoping for storms around Kansas-Oklahoma. We're hoping. It's the best chase country and if you're going to see a tornado, it's gotta be there right? Right???