Badlands After the Storms

June 25, 2013 Jessica L. Bryant

My camping plans were thwarted a few nights due to many thunderstorms. The most impressive were friday morning. I woke up to dark skies and mist, and decided to throw my things into the car just in case. Got a text from the chief ranger warning me of baseball size hail, 60 mph winds, and rotation in the clouds. Gathered my computer, camera, and some other things and weathered the storm inside the campground office with some great people. Enjoyed the sourdough pancake breakfast - the starter for the sourdough is over 100 years old and came west on a wagon train. Pretty cool. Lots of rain and hail and wind. Left the tent up and it weather the storms well, but was no match for the flooding. We lucked out and just had pea sized hail. Just a little south my friends had bigger hail that destroyed their garden and RV. They were driving to Rapid and encountered hail large enough to break the windshield and pock-mark the truck. The baseball sized hail stayed south of where I was, but caused some serious damage. After that storm, there was another just 15 minutes out, and then a third. All the rain made the coloring of the badlands more defined and vivid, so I set out with my camera for the afternoon. The grasses were already impressively green and lush, but seemed to somehow get even more vivid, almost surreal. More storms that night, and a tornado watch all day saturday. I spent the entire day saturday out photographing the north unit of the park. The light was incredible and the colors in the rocks spectacular. I have hundreds of fabulous shots from that day. I've just done a quick review of them, and am posting a few, but there are just so many. I feel like a kid in a candy store! More storms saturday night, so I hung out at the Wagon Wheel figuring I'd be safer with locals who know where to go in bad weather. No warning sirens in SD to help you out. Got to play some games of cribbage and relax a bit for my last night. Sunday I drove east, and plan to spend a couple weeks in the twin cities area. Looks like more rain and storms here, too.