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It was almost 7 p.m. now, still two hours left until sunset. I elected to head south on 81 towards Yankton, as strong cells were around Yankton. But, there were several cells, and none seemed particularly dominant. Before getting to Yankton, we went east on the road to Volin. This led us to a couple of strong cells, and we could see some lowerings. Finally---things were looking up a bit! Between Volin and Wakonda we were watching three cells, one to the NNW with a good wall cloud, one to the SW with a ho-hum, non-rotating lowering, and a bigger cell just to the east. The cell to the east was raining into the inflow of our wall-cloud storm, and this basically turned the WC storm to mush. But, I think the cool outflow from the east storm helped to energize the southwest cell...or at least gave it a boundary to work on. The southwest cell's updraft was now just to our south and southeast, and was growing very large. We were east of Volin
again, west of Highway 19 in Clay County. Within minutes, a strongly rotating wall cloud was just to our northeast, and a couple of slender funnels were approaching the ground! This was only a mile or so away. We cleared some trees and stopped, and watched as funnels kind of danced around with perhaps brief touchdowns, but the main show was the strongly rotating wall cloud. We were getting blasted by strong westerly RFD winds, and Chuck's hat blew towards Iowa.
After a few minutes and with no tornadoes for the moment, we got back in the van and blasted east and north, towards the wall cloud. Another tornado was forming---a large tornado! This was south of Centerville a few miles. The tornado kicked up some debris, went up a little, and came back down......it seemed a little shy about kissing the earth. We went further north, towards Centerville, and the same tornado, or a new one from the same wall cloud, started to crank up really good. This one was on the ground near Centerville for about 10 minutes, and we watched it from the west side of Centerville as it moved to the northwest, NNW of town. Meanwhile, another wall cloud formed on the east side of the mesocyclone's updraft, to the ENE of Centerville. Suddenly, another elephant trunk-shaped tornado was solidly on the ground to our ENE, at the same time that the old Centerville tornado was moving off to the NW! We tried to go
east of Centerville to get a better look at the new tornado, but the road was blocked by a big tree. The house nearby was damaged, and someone drove up and said he had just sold that place a few weeks earlier! I decided to go back to Centerville and then north, but Chuck said that there were now two tornados going at the same time just to our northeast. We stopped
again, and there were actually three tornadoes going at once in the same area! These again drifted northwest, and we went through Centerville and northward to keep up. We passed a lot of gawkers and went north, as a NEW wall cloud to the northeast began as the old one and its tornadoes fizzled out to the NNW. There was light to moderate rain on us during much of this
time, but we were close enough to have a great view of everything that was occurring. Several miles north of Centerville, we had two large tornadoes in front of us at the same time AGAIN, one with the wall cloud to the NNW, and one with the new wall cloud to the NNE. These funnels and tornadoes were mostly skinny and ropy, but would occasionally become a bit fat and start throwing a bunch of debris into the air. Occasionally they would quickly disappear, with new ones suddenly appearing in the same place or not too far away beneath the same wall cloud. Towards 8:45 p.m. we were near Davis. We had passed through at least one minor damage path along the road north out of Centerville, and the sky was now very dark, and the tornado, or tornadoes, were low contrast. Another low storm base loomed to the SW, so we went back south to watch. This cell did not produce any tornadoes that we could see, but it evolved into a beautiful spaceship updraft! And, as we watched from near Lennox, it put on a drop-dead C-G and C-C and multiple-fork dagger lightning display! Mosquitoes were feeding on me, so we went farther north to catch up and to find stronger inflow winds. This was accomplished west of Sioux Falls, and the lightning was even more constant and incredible, and the storm structure even more jaw-dropping! Inflow winds were 30 mph, but, as I was trying to call for motel rooms, we were suddenly getting swamped by heavy rain and strong west winds.
We went into Sioux Falls, as tornado warnings continued for our vicinity. It was a little nerve-wracking as the wind and rain blew sideways......but the radar showed a primarily linear complex over the city.
What an unbelievable day.....I have no idea how many tornadoes we saw from this one storm. Well, I DO have an idea ---- at least 7 or 8.....maybe as many as 9 or 10. I'll figure it out later. Our group went from the depths of despair --- thinking we had royally messed up the chase --- to incredulity and elation --- as the atmosphere suddenly decided that it was Showtime, right where we were. Right up until the time that the tornadoes began I was thinking about all of the dumb decisions that I had made that day. They actually weren't dumb, but they seemed to be leading me into a horrible bust on a great tornado day. It was bonafide dumb luck that we
wound up on the Centerville storm. This was about 200 miles from my original target area! By the way, I think it was our Mitchell storm (that we never reached) that went on to wipe out a small town called Manchester, between Huron and Brookings.
Our lucky horseshoe worked again.
I wonder if Chuck's hat has come back down yet.
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