Tornado in McCook County, South Dakota

A brief tornado was observed in an open field by a storm chaser around 1 mile north of Bridgewater. The tornado was estimated to touch down around one-half mile north of the Zion Bible Church on the north edge of Bridgewater. The tornado tracked northeast for less than one minute before it lifted southwest of the intersection of 436rd Avenue and 263rd Street. There were no damage indicators present to derive a rating. The average path width was estimated at 40 yards based on video evidence.

A trough lifted through the western High Plains as a weak convergence boundary drifted eastward into southeast South Dakota during the late afternoon. Near the boundary, a diurnally destabilized air mass focused convective development in a fairly weak shear environment across the lower James River Valley. Thunderstorms largely produced large hail up to ping-pong ball size during periods of stronger updrafts within the storm clusters. Shear concentrated in lower levels and storm interactions combined to produce several brief tornadoes in southeast South Dakota. Slow moving storms also produced spotty heavy rainfall, some of which that fell on areas that received heavy rainfall west of Sioux Falls in the previous night.