Big Severe Weather Event Today, And I (Might) Have A Ringside Seat

Anyone who has taken a quick glance at the this morning's weather news knows they're gearing up today for a severe weather outbreak across the middle of the country.  It seems Nebraska and Iowa are in the principal target zones.  

This map shows storm chasers
converging on Nebraska this morning.
Each dot represents a stormchasing team.  

Usually, I'm far removed from this kind of thing, as I live in Vermont. But I'm still in Yankton, South Dakota, visiting relatives.

Will I get a front row seat to this?

I was treated to Great Plains style, thrilling severe weather on Sunday, with hail and 68 mph winds in a severe storm that hit the town.

Today, Yankton, right on the Missouri River and near the border with Nebraska, is right on the edge of the expected core of the severe weather outbreak.

Will today turn out to be scary, exciting or boring for me? We'll see.

The media really hypes this sort of thing, which is probably good, since it gets people in the mood to hide in their basements when the tornado sirens go off. But otherwise, people are pretty nonchalant about the expected bad weather.

The web page for television station KSFY in Sioux Falls doesn't talk much about the severe weather, except to say the storm damage in Yankton Sunday was caused by straight line winds and not a tornado. The news from them is about a robbery spree and the state's primary election today.

Of course, Sioux Falls isn't in the heart of the storm threat area.

The lead story on KETV's web site  in Omaha, Nebraska is the expected severe weather, however.

So we'll see how this plays out. As of midmorning strong storms were already rumbling over southwestern South Dakota. I'm sure zillions of storm chasers are deployed in the region, and we'll have oodles of photos and videos of the bad weather.

Let's not get run over by these storms, guys.