5-10-2011 discussion

Had the classic, gut feeling, the few days before the event.  Many where not optimistic about this day but a combination of: a severe case of SDS, knowing that storms like to pop just to the east of me, and as said my classic gut feeling; made me very anxious.
    Storms began to pop somewhere around 20z but i was having a hard time getting any data.  Ran outside instead and could faintly see what could have been an anvil.  There was kind of a weird haze high up in the air.  Something i have noticed before but not really ever looked into.  Maybe something to do with the moisture from week convection early that day or something to do with the strong cap that was in place? The other day i saw this the most was on 7-17-2010.  both where extremely slow moving days.
   Told my dad that he might want to hurry on chores and ran back inside to try to get a better idea of things.  Still couldnt get any recent enough updates but found a stream on imap.  Watched for a few minutes when i realised I could recognise the road he was on!  haha, dont know the name but somewhere just to the north of my house.
   Wanted to cry watching the line take off and push move past my house.  The line was growing and from what i could tell it was a beautiful line of pearls with the nearest cell over st.cloud.  To add to my frustration  once they got a few miles east they basically stopped.  For a good half hour i was feeling a drop here and there falling out of the anvil.

I couldn't leave to chase until chores got done, this took about two hours.  Finally, i was able to get going around 7.  Without even looking i jumped in the car and headed east.   There i managed to get internet back through my phone and decided to head towards princeton.   I kind of got annoyed because my mom, who insisted on coming, was driving and wouldn't stop talking on the phone.  Driving through St. cloud i couldn't decide where we should have been going.  There was the princeton cell that looked pretty good, and to the south near buffalo there was a cell that didnt looked quite as strong but had better signs of rotation.  The southern cell went tornado warned but i decided to stay on the northern cell as i did not know if i could make it.
          Pretty soon after we left st.cloud i lost internet completely again.  Still figured princeton would be a good place and then head north but i had no data.  I was so busy fumbling around with my computer that we probably would have driven right past it.  If it were not for my mom pointing out the little clutter of cars pulled on the side of the road taking pictures.
      It was beautiful, somehow I got lucky enough that i was just to the south of the hook.  With storm motions at 15mph I just had to sit back and enjoy the view.
     I was having a little bit of trouble getting our new point and shoot to work but after dark i was taking some short short videos in the general direction of the updraft.  That night reviewing them i found this in a lightning flash (edited to clean it up)

Of course all we can do is speculate but it was tornadow warned at the time and i was looking north into the hook.