The storm initated around 21 UTC on 26 August 2004 ahead of a strong cold front near a pre-frontal trough. It quickly gained intensity and became tornadic at 2240 UTC in Sully County, SD. By 2300 UTC, the UND students intercepted the storm near Miller, SD. By this time, the storm already had excellent presentation on radar with a hook-like echo appendage in the right rear-flank and a low-level mesocyclone.

Within several minutes, the storm became tornadic once more producing a F2 tornado that skirted around Miller, SD.

This tornado roped out around 2322 UTC as seen by the opening picture on this page. After this occlusion, the supercell developed a new mesocyclone to the east and quickly produced another tornado. On radar at 2338 UTC, the tornadic circulation was associated with aliased Doppler velocities. Although this tornado was obscurred by rain curtains from the chasers' perspective, they were treated with amazing cloud structure.

At 0018 UTC, one of the tornadoes remerged as it roped out. Unseen at the time was an even larger tornado to the north.

After this tornado dissipated, a large wedge tornado was observered near Huron, SD. This would be the last tornado of the day, dissipating at 0046 UTC. Soon after, the graduate students were treated with an amazing sunset to end the day.

During the course of this event, the UND students were in frequent contact with the National Weather Service offices in Aberdeen, SD and Sioux Falls, SD. Please see the ABR Event Summary or the FSD Event Summary for more information about this event.

For more pictures of this storm and a detailed map of the UND graduate students' path please see Aaron Kennedy's chase summary .