Capping was a real issue the first two day and 28th was so weakly capped, the storms never really got cranking. However, the cell which passed just north of Milaca on the 28th caught Jessica and her dad on highway 169 coming back from a weekend up north. The Denali did not fare well in the 2" stones!
Anyhow, I need to get caught up on everything so pardon the brief entry here but please feel free to visit the website for many more images and comments regarding each day on the website! Just follow the links below!
Really bad upper dynamics limited the severe possibilities but a multicell complex did organize and sporadically dropped some 1" hail and some gusty winds. Was dinging around with a garage project of building a boot rack during the afternoon and periodically check vis sat and radar as by looking at the Cu, it was pretty obvious initiation was going to occur somewhere between 3 pm and 4 pm. Speaking of the boot rack, I don't know about your house but with our ultra active outdoor lifestyle our family has, we have two areas of footwear explosions. One in the entryway for the "regular" shoes, sandals, etc. The other (and worse) area is in the garage right by the door which leads into the house. Barn boots, cowboy boots, ropers, work books, hunting boots, hiking boots, cold weather boots... x5 residents. You get the idea. Hence the need for a 4 ft tall, 3 foot wide, 16" deep custom home for all of these.
Anyhow, back to the storms. The cluster went severe for hail and potential winds just over the 58 mph threshold. Neither of the teens wanted to go check it out so as usual Cailyn was willing to go with. Only had to head down between Watertown and Winsted in Carver county. Along the way a couple of small cells went up and dropped some torrential rain and small pea sized hail.
Cailyn and I watching a small shelf cloud off CR20 west of Watertown, MN. When it passed over, the winds gusted to 53mph sending my hat and shades flying down the road. I had my live video stream running on TVN Weather so I'm sure a few people got treated to the chase of the hat. Pretty funny.
A little video. Have a lot of new small hail dents from the 1" stones. One sunny day and they will pop out on their own.
After the cold front passed, the temps dropped about 20° and some post frontal storms did form. The were sub severe and the lightning ops were not good with all of the cold air advecttion low level crap streaming out of the north behind the cold front.
The plus side was some good rains fell from out place off to the northeast. That will help keep the rivers charged for some good kayaking over the next week or so.
May 18th!
With the above mentioned cold front out in the Dakotas still, a pre frontal trough triggered some little hailers. The Wright county storms didn't do much but one out in Kandiyohi county near Wilmar did drop some good hail. Check out Doug Kiesling's video HERE.
Here is a short time lapse shot near Big Lake, MN. Again, Doug was in the right place at the right time to get a nice daytime lightning shot off the same storm.
Final shot. Well, actually video frames. One off the GoPro and one off the M50U of the same lightning strike.
Nothing impressive but considering over the two days never got more than 20 miles from home it was ok. Looks like a much more active week coming up especially towards the 24th and 25th so stay tuned!
With the death ridge firmly in place and no chase opportunities in the near future, took a Mother's Day Weekend trip up to Fergus Falls to see mom and get some paddling in. This was a really cool trip! Growing up in the area and having only tubed parts of the river in the summer at low water, I was looking forward to seeing what the stretch from Wall Lake back into Fergus was like with high water. The closest river gauge according to the DNR is at Elizabeth MN (where the river doesn't even pass through...but the Pelican River does) showed the flow at 0.671kcfs and at a level of 7.18 ft. UPDATE: the elevation drops almost 45 feet in the 5 miles from the Wall Lake put in point to the East Mount Faith take out point.
The water is pretty fast. I covered the 5 river miles in 45 minutes from put in to take out. The first 1/2 river mile is flat water paddling but as soon as the river enters the trees, it flows through a bluff / gorge type terrain and the elevation falls from the lake country to the east heading to the prairie to the west. The original "falls" in Fergus Falls were harnessed back around 1870 as a dam was constructed and later a hydro for electrical production. Anyhow, back to the paddle.
I need to apologize for not having images and video up to the usual standard. The GoPro Hero2 camera I use to shoot with decided it wanted to fog up after getting doused a few times with cold river water. I will be going back to re-shoot a run on this stretch as it is hard to find info on the internet regarding real experience for the Ottertail. Speaking of the river water...IT IS CLEAR AND CLEAN!! Not what I was expecting near the end of a 193 mile river which starts out in the pine needle stained bogs of Beltrami county and winds through many lakes and cattle land. A true testament to some of the clean water policies in place are making a difference.
Lots of small riffles and rapids as the river narrows and the pace picks up.
This is an image I shot last November during low water in a drought of where the class I is now. Those rocks on the right side of image is the line you want to take.
It's a left/center/left move to get through the rapids.
This is how that area of rocks looks now as you head into the rapids.
After negotiating the class 1+ rapids just upstream from the Broken Down Dam Park, you get dumped into a large pool with some wicked currents. The river current wants to slam you into the dam remnants on the south (left) side. You need to start picking a line to the right to compensate and put yourself in position to shoot through the gap.
This is how the gap looks going though now:
Once you make it though the dam, you get a break for a bit with just some riffles and class 1- stuff. As you near the Hoot Lake power plant, once again the pace will pick up. You have to negotiate two bridges. The current is strong so make sure you have a solid line picked. I went left on both of them.
At the second bridge you will see this. This is a video frame so make sure you watch for this part in actual video. I had seen this "dam" as a kid and knew it was not a low-head. There is a hydrualic though and you need to be damn careful with it. At this flow, the "dam" (more like a 2-3 foot ramp covered with boulders) will create a double standing wave. These are class 2+ or class 3 rapids. If you are not an experienced paddler, take the portage. I took a left then center line and had to do a whole lot of bracing to keep from flipping. In a whitewater play boat, it wouldn't be too bad but in a 13.5' transition boat it was a fun challenge!
As I said, bracing was the key here. Pretty much on my left side here.
A spray skirt is a must. You would swamp an open cockpit or a canoe at this spot.
A couple of hundred yards after the double standing wave, the trip comes an end at the East Mount Faith Avenue canoe access in Fergus Falls. No sense on going any further as there is nothing interesting in terms of paddling and the river slows and widens behind the central dam in town. Overall I was VERY impressed with this short 5 mile paddle. The flow is strong enough so you need to keep paddling to hold your line, you are going to hit rapids, and the water is super clear. I hope this level maintains for a while as I really want to go back and re-shoot the video with the GoPro without the fog! It was a blast!
Here is the video from the day:
Happy paddling!
After getting about 5 hours of sleep after chasing in NE/SD/MN, up and at 'em on Sunday morning. Headed to Banning State Park in Sandstone, MN to watch some of the whitewater rodeo on the Kettle River.
More images can be found HERE!
The chase account is done and can be seen HERE. What looked like pending bust ended up being a lot of fun with an elevated nocturnal supercell sliding across southeast South Dakota into southwestern Minnesota.
Sure looks like tomorrow could end up being close to the area which produced this gem:
Hard to believe it has been 5 years. Tomorrow I will have my daughter with who is now the same age Cullen was the time we shot this.
In other news, I finally have the images and web page done from the April 4th prescribed burn in the Sherburne NWR. You can see the full set HERE.
Chase account from the May 1st central MN chase is done.
The full set of images with the recap can be seen here
Not a tornado but it looked cool.
Here an an extended version of the video
And here is just the wimpy tornado.
