Day 3: May 29, 2014

Total Miles: 610

Total Driving Time: 11 hours and 0 minutes 

Today was our first official chase day! We had our daily weather discussion at 9:00 am CDT to determine where we would be chasing. The forecasting team determined that our target area would be west of Bismarck, ND. We stopped in Mandan, ND to launch our first weather balloon at approximately 1830 UTC. We unfortunately lost signal at 740 mb. After lunch, we headed towards a multi-cell storm near New England, ND (~3:45 pm MDT). An impressive anvil and small mammatus clouds were associated with this storm. In the distance both a hail and rain shaft could be recognized. 

  

We continued our first chase day by going after a storm in South Dakota on our way to our hotel in Rapid City, SD (~7:00 pm MDT). The storm was located in western South Dakota approximately 100 miles from WY. This storm had low cumulus clouds and significant lightning. There was no rotation with this storm. We drove through this storm in a safe manner and encountered heavy precipitation and marble sized hail. While driving through the storm, the sunset could be seen in the distance. We stopped in Sturgis, SD to watch the lightning from the storm we just core punched until 9:00 pm MDT. We arrived at our hotel in Rapid City around 10:30 pm MDT.