Central Minnesota Severe Storms

July 14, 2009

Austin Purdy and I went toward the southwest (through Brainerd) to catch some storms in central Minnesota. I delayed a little bit, thinking we were too late for the show (we did leave a little late), we turned around and headed back north for a storm near Randall, MN. We then saw the Spicer storm and liked the shape on radar. We headed south towards it as tornado warnings were issued and tornado reports came in (actually, I think a tornado warning on the storm was what motivated us to drop south to that area in the first place). By the time we caught the storm, we were in the St. Cloud metropolitan area during rush hour traffic, and that forced us to detour around town. The storm was done producing at that point, but some weaker cells developed and moved into St. Cloud, producing rotating wall clouds, which I did not photograph because I was driving, and once we were able to stop, St. Cloud is so built up nowadays that it was not possible to see anything from vantagepoints I had used before-- when I had lived there in 2000. After dinner at a Subway restaurant, we headed north on U.S. 169 and saw a couple other neat storms.