April 12, 2015: First Chase of the Season

After the MN Severe Storms Conference on Saturday, we were itching to see some storms. The Storm Prediction Center put out a Marginal risk for up into Southern MN/Central MN.

























The marginal risk was mostly for marginal hail and wind with any storm that would fire on the cold front.

Nick and I set out after Noon for destination Stearns County. We were watching radar and saw a nice little more isolated cell started to come up from the Southwest. We went to Hwy 23 and into the town of Richmond.

There we experienced small pea sized to pencil eraser sized hail; and heavy downpour of rain.

These little storms were moving northeast fast - and they kept popping up along this line.

We followed this storm up Hwy 23 to Pleasant Lake near St. Cloud. There we dropped the storm and went back South to see about getting on another semi-isolated cell coming up.

Near Kimball; we went through heavy rain and very small hail. Here we then left the storms be and heading East back towards home.

Below are some additional pictures from the day.

Country wide angle view of the storm.

Rain shaft clearly visible with this storm.