June 29th, 2005 Tornado near Madelia, MN

Video links: Divx quality is better than WM9 (Windows Media 9) if you can play them. Most people should be able to play WM9.
(Get the Divx player: Windows XP/2000 or Mac).

This was my first tornado! I was rather excited and not always thinking straight, but I'll learn from my mistakes.

Storm location: (Thanks to Plymouth State)

These files are on my home server, so expect the transfer rate to be slow (40K/sec max). I'm still experimenting with video sizes and have no idea how much traffic I will see, so I apologize if this 'experience' is painful. On to the show.

Here is the sky rotating a bit almost directly above me. I ended up here after driving east to get out of hail, and then heading south but stopping (bad idea) to take pics of the amazing sky to the north (hail curtains?). That's when I saw this above.

4 Seconds, sped up to 3x normal speed to show motion better. Anti shake processed. Divx (259K) WM9 (218K)

I was about to get out of there when I saw this ground circulation go by in the road ahead of me.

6 Seconds and anti-shake processed. Divx (600K) WM9 (570K)

This is about 2 minutes later. The tornado is moving almost directly away, so little motion is being seen.

2 Minutes 35 seconds Divx (8.8M) WM9 (8.9M)

This is the same as above, but sped up 3 times to show the motion better.

52 Seconds. Divx (2.9M) WM9 (3.2M)

Here's a funnel cloud seen about 10 minutes later.

23 Seconds and sped up to 3 times the normal speed. Divx (1M) WM9 (1.8M)

Still pictures: As another oversight of not thinking straight, my camera was in manual long exposure mode so I didn't get any shots of the storm structure or tornado.

Another chaser and I afterwards. I sneak in barely on the right (vid capture).

Sunset:

Chase time: 7 hours. Mileage: ~250 miles.