I knew just by looking at the radar last night that things were bad. Onida was hit hard. Our original report was that the wind got up to 90mph. Reports were streaming in that sheds were destroyed, roof ripped off and feed wagons were thrown around. The town took a direct hit. Although it wasn't a tornado, it was one of those situations when a tornado could have actually been better because the damage could have been more concentrated.

When this happened I started to watch the areas down the road from this storm. My attention turned to Highmore which was in the direct path of this storm. Here's what I think happened. The storm was moving to the south and east with the gusts most likely in front of it. Another storm was taking aim on Highmore from the south east. They looked to merge right over the city. I think the two gust fronts ahead of the storms may have ran together and slowed each other down. That caused rising air right over the city that ate up the unstable air before the storm could get there.

Now, what I have just said is simply hypothetical and may not be true. In theory it works, but sometimes theory goes out the door with severe storms. What did happen is that storm continued to roar all the way to Minnehaha County. So it made a track through our viewing area from Dewey County, through Sully and Hyde, down to Davison and finally dropped below severe limits and stayed there through the rest of the night.

There were other warnings too, many around the cell that caused most of the damage. Another impressive point is that a lot of cells fired up behind this cell and the entire system was not very organized. It just seemed to continue to find unstable air and fire up quickly.

From the reports in Aberdeen there are a few things that stand out. The first is the wind gust from Onida, which was officially clocked at 124mph by a recording station at the Onida Airport. That's an EF-2 Tornado or a Category 1 hurricane. There are many reports over 60mph. Typically we don't get a whole lot of wind reports because it is not something easy to measure with just the human eye. Three cities saw wind speeds over hurricane strength (74mph). Those cities are Onida, Harrold and Holabird. Onida itself had three wind reports, two of which were at 90 mph. So far the damage reports from the winds are power out in Onida (not sure if it still is), a feed wagon was tossed 40 feet and a bank had part of its roof torn off.

There were many more reports of hail. The largest was 2.50 inches, which is tennis ball size. Lots of reports of were above golf ball size at 1.75 inches. Typically I consider golf ball size hail the cut off line where hail becomes significant. A tornado was also reported near Parade, SD that was said to be on the ground for three to four minutes.

The Sioux Falls National Weather Service didn't have as many reports, which is understandable given that the storms hit their area late at night and the storms weren't as bad once it reached their area. Regardless, the majority of the reports were from the wind and the highest report is 60 mph one of which was in Sioux Falls. Many of the reports are associated with trees and branches being down and crop damage. The biggest damage was to a few sheds where a few machine sheds were walls were blown out.

It was a very long night that could have been much worse. The report that I am happiest to give is that no one was injured or killed.