June 20, 2015

Chasing with the TIV and Doghouse crews, June 20 was forecast to be mainly a down day. We started heading east out of Buffalo, WY toward prospects on following days.

We had some time in the morning so I got in a hike around the gorgeous mountain town of Buffalo, WY.

Doghouse gets all the mud blasted off the undercarriage after we our incident on the previous day's chase where we got stuck.

Leaving the Bighorns as we drive east into South Dakota.

We killed some time at Wall Drug, a sprawling gift shop tourist trap near the Badlands. TIV and Doghouse attracted as much attention as any of the other attractions there. A storm was cruising just north of town so we poked our noses in it just to see a gust front surging eastward. It was a pretty storm with fast motion but it had no chance of giving us a tornado shot. We called the chase and headed east.

Dinner and room in Murdo. We made a rather fateful decision that night about whether we should hang around and chase South Dakota the following day or use it as a travel day to get what looked like a potentially more robust tornado play in Wisconsin (of all places) on June 22. I kind of wanted to play both days, but that meant an overnight haul, and could leave us exhausted on the bigger tornado day. We opted for the safer play and made June 21 a travel day. In hindsight, we should have chased South Dakota on June 21 and blown off the Wisconsin setup. We would have likely gotten some pretty tornado shots in northwest South Dakota, and the tornadoes wound up eluding us on June 22 anyway.