A tri-county search is underway for a teen near the town of Taunton, Minnesota. Brandon Swanson, 19, was reported missing early Wednesday morning, and on Thursday crews narrowed their search thanks to a cell phone call.

Search teams found Brandon Swanson's car a half mile north of Minnesota Highway 68 on the border between Lincoln county and Lyon county. If Swanson had made a 911 call from the location it would have taken almost no time to find him because dispatchers and law enforcement officers would have been able to trace his location to within at least 300 feet.

But the only call authorities could track was the one Swanson made to his parents. The only option was to find which tower the call came from, in this case it was a cell tower near Minneota.

Phone companies keep a log of the towers used for every call we make on our phones. When law enforcement agencies find the location of the tower it typically narrows the search to within about 10 miles of the tower. In this case it meant they were able to locate Brandon Swanson's car within a matter of hours.

Ten miles is still a large area to search but we've come a long way thanks to a huge increase in cell towers. In the year 2000 there were so few towers that you could only narrow a search to within 40 miles.