Date: 30 June 2012

Location: Southwestern South Dakota from Enning to Elm Springs to Badlands Nat'l Park, SD

Shoot Type: Storm Chase

Synopsis:
This was a rather frustrating storm chase that culminated on a positive note. Jay Antle, Evan Bookbinder, and I were targeting along and just north of I-90 east of Rapid City. As storms initially struggled to develop, we became impatient and went after an ongoing storm to our north-northeast, northeast of White Owl, SD. As we reached the town of Enning after driving on unpaved roads, we learned that this storm was severely undercut, and the only way we could get in the proper position was to backtrack down to I-90. As this was happening, a hail storm developed to our south. We eventually got southeast of this storm along I-90 and got into a favorable viewing position when we got into the Badlands National Park. In the park, we photographed the storm which took on some marginal supercell characteristics. At sunset, we drove south of the park along Hwy 44 near Imlay, SD and photographed some marginal mammatus as we also documented some golfball size hail that had just fallen before we arrived.