Avoiding the rain and hail shaft found me a few miles west northwest of Clear Lake but I had driven into a problem. Directly in front of me I saw a new cell developing with little rain but a lot of rotation in the clouds. It was unnerving and coming right at me. I drove under it and beyond a few miles then turned around and watched my first ever twister form and develop over the South Dakota landscape. I have seen and experienced intense storms on the northern plains before but this beast was something new entirely. I don't consider myself a storm chaser and am happy to watch bad weather from a distance. Therefore my photos are not real close but feature the immense cloud formations. I do like getting rainbows after a storm and ironically enough, a shaft of sunlight hit the forming tornado cell prior to touching ground and I was able to see and photograph that. It was quite the show.
Below are the images of my afternoon and evening timestamped to show how it all unfolded. Thanks for taking a look.
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| Midway Lutheran of rural Moody County - 4:21 pm |
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| Found a wild wood lily in the eastern hills of Brookings County - 5:40 pm |
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| Found a new location for a rare-ish wind bog orchid at 7-mile fen in Deuel County - 6:25 pm |
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| Serious rotation going on in the tornadic cell prior to touching down east northeast of Clear Lake, SD - 7:07 pm |
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| A rainbow begins to form with the tornadic cell - 7:09 pm |
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| A double rainbow with the tornadic cell - 7:11 pm |
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| The tornado first making contact - 7:18 pm |
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| The full cloud and funnel structure - 7:19 pm |
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| Zoomed into the funnel now showing debris - 7:20 pm |
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| Wider shot of tornado cell - 7:21 pm |
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| Multi-image panorama of tornado loosing power and reducing size - 7:28 pm |
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| Tornado about to dissipate - 7:30 pm |
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| On my way home, I saw a rope tornado drop from the clouds straight east of Clear Lake heading towards Gary, SD. I did not chase but got an image with my telephoto lens - 8:51 pm |
