[Josh Richardson]

Decided to change the target area after getting to Blue Earth and headed for Mankato while heading there my chase partner(Jayson Prentice) and I decided to move a little further west towards some CU building near Madelia south of the New Ulm area. After getting gas the towers shot up extremely fast and within about ten minutes it went TOR warned and had a very nice meso on it. We shot up to HWY 68 west of Judson where we could see a great looking wall cloud rotating and moving NE across the river there as we continued west towards we got a glimpse of the tornado touchdown across the river near Nicolette and then rope out again after dealing with more trees due to the river valley we again seen the tornado in a stovepipe form and looking rather large near Nicolette at this point we then had to head north towards it across the river and lost sight again due to all the trees. After getting to Nicolette we witnessed plenty of downed power lines and structural damage especially on the north east side of town and outside of town to the east. While trying to maneuver a horrible road network and damage and police all over the place we continued to stay behind the tornado which appeared to be rain wrapped at this time continously running across more damage. Meso still looked great from behind the entire way to St. Peter but were unsure if tornado was on the ground the entire time as it seemed to be lifting and dropping quite frequently. In St. Peter we cam across more structural damage and downed power lines in the road on the SE side of town. We had to have only still been a couple of minutes behind it at that point as there were no cops there yet and everyone had to drive around the power poles and over the lines. After that we ran into more and more bad road networks and zig-zagged SE for a long while and didnt really get any more great structure. All in all though I think I covered everything but Im sure Jayson can note something if I forgot. At least now Im not shutout for the year!! Will try to get vid stills up on here this weekend although never had a chance to pullover to get anything good as we were constantly on the move to find a better road system or to avoid power lines and other debris. So Im not sure how well the contrast was on the stovepipe vid grab will have to check it out later.