June 21st, 2007 Blue Earth, MN

I ran home after work, grabbed my gear, changed, picked a general location and headed South on I-35, crossing the Minnesota river around 5:13 attempting to exit the metro before traffic stopped entirely. I re-fulled around Lakeville briefly, my car was on E from last night. Around Fairbuilt, MN I started seeing the cell in the SE Metro suddenly look alot more attractive versus a more MCS apperance along with the more interesting section passing into SE MN Bluff country. I decided to take a moment and reflect on the situation at the Medford McDonald’s DriveThru. Medford had a really cool traffic circle exit, if you have never tried it, take the exit and go around the circle once or twice before continuing on. Ordered a #3 with Coke. The fry’s allowed me focus and I made up my mind to go after the cell to the North East and initially plotted a course for Mankato after looking at a couple of nexrad loops, I had actually wasted alot of time by not going after it in the first place but, at least I would not have to deal with a possibly less than optimal river crossing had I been on it sooner.

I saw a nice strong/healthy cell from afar, I made a close approch just SW of Mankato making the first pass just in front of the cell. A couple people found a hail shelter from which to tape from. I then went South and stopped for a while to observe and take some more pics/video, I travelled further South then made another close pass heading East, South, West then it just kind of fell apart in the matter of minutes. From my position I was unable to report on hail sizes (unless I stopped moving). The storms movement was SE at 25.

I found some ‘seemingly’ old structures and was taking some photos of some Mammatus in the background. Bill Doms briefly stopped to say hi, while taking the photos of the Mamatus. I was looking at all the powerlines and antenna’s protruding from this old place. Each structure had a powerline running to it and each building had no less than 3 low profile antenna’s projecting from it. I ended up with a shot of a side of one structure with some old fashioned looking barrels next to it. I took some more shots up the road as the sun was going down and the Mammatus was casting more shadows and had more of a redish/orange apperance.

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