Chaselog July 13th South Dakota

Headed out by myself for what is by far the farthest chase I've ever done alone, and it was a GREAT learning experience for me to figure out my still of chasing while chasing alone. I got going a little late but got on the to be Valentine storm around 4:30. I didnt get real close since I had a pretty good view of it from about 15 miles away. Got off I90 near Stamford, SD and watched it for a while. It had a good base and there were lowerings hanging right on the ground, but I'm pretty sure they were not tornadoes. Tried following the storm south but the dirt roads in the area were horrible with lots of hills and curves. Decided to bail on it to go for the storm to the north since I didnt want to chance getting stuck plus I couldnt go more than 30 mph on the dirt roads. Sat the the I90/highway 63 junction south of Midland to watch the storm and get some video for a timelapse. After about 25 minutes I headed north as the base of the storm was just northwest of highway 63 and I knew I would have a good view of it. At the time time the storm wasnt much going on under the updraft, but followed it back to the interstate and by the time I got there the storm REALLY got going. Lots of motion, some rotation, and a wet RFD. Again, didnt follow the storm south of I90 due to the dirt roads. Headed west towards Rapid City to wait for the stuff coming out of WY/MT, stopped in Kakoda. Waited a while, realized there wasnt a ton of TOR potential with the way the storms were looking on radar. Headed east to get in to position for Tuesday in Minnesota. Again, a very good learning experience for me. I didnt have much experience chasing alone before, but now I realize how rewarding it is to bag something nice and know you did it by yourself. Pics and video below:View of the storm that would go on to produce the tornadoes in s.c. South Dakota and n.c. Nebraska, view is looking east from Stamford, SD.Anyways, headed out by myself for what is by far the farthest chase I've ever done alone, and it was a GREAT learning experience for me to figure out my still of chasing while chasing alone. I got going a little late but got on the to be Valentine storm around 4:30. I didnt get real close since I had a pretty good view of it from about 15 miles away. Got off I90 near Stamford, SD and watched it for a while. It had a good base and there were lowerings hanging right on the ground, but I'm pretty sure they were not tornadoes. Tried following the storm south but the dirt roads in the area were horrible with lots of hills and curves. Decided to bail on it to go for the storm to the north since I didnt want to chance getting stuck plus I couldnt go more than 30 mph on the dirt roads. Sat the the I90/highway 63 junction south of Midland to watch the storm and get some video for a timelapse. After about 25 minutes I headed north as the base of the storm was just northwest of highway 63 and I knew I would have a good view of it. At the time time the storm wasnt much going on under the updraft, but followed it back to the interstate and by the time I got there the storm REALLY got going. Lots of motion, some rotation, and a wet RFD. Again, didnt follow the storm south of I90 due to the dirt roads. Headed west towards Rapid City to wait for the stuff coming out of WY/MT, stopped in Kakoda. Waited a while, realized there wasnt a ton of TOR potential with the way the storms were looking on radar. Headed east to get in to position for Tuesday in Minnesota. Again, a very good learning experience for me. I didnt have much experience chasing alone before, but now I realize how rewarding it is to bag something nice and know you did it by yourself. Pics and video below:View of the storm that would go on to produce the tornadoes in s.c. South Dakota and n.c. Nebraska, view is looking east from Stamford, SD.

View I had of the storm from about 15 miles away just before it crossed I90 near Kakoda(I think I finally got that right), SD. This storm would go on to become the Valentine, NE hybrid monster. Many people captured the INCREDIBLE structure near Valentine. Unfortunately I didnt have a good route to get south to keep up with the storm, so I bailed on it after it got south of I90.View is looking west-southwest







The second storm I got on which was near Midland, SD. The view I had was about 3 miles south of Midland looking northwest. I'm nearly 100% sure I was the only chaser on this storm, or atleast I havent heard anyone else mention this storm in their reports and I was the only one on Spotter Network on this storm. Badlands+no other chasers=incredible photo ops.












Pic of the lowering which I am hesitant to call a wall cloud since it was displaced a bit from the updraft. However there was a lot of motion, rotation, and a wet RFD.


CLICK HERE FOR A TIMELAPSE OF THE THUNDERSTORM UPDRAFT IN HASKON COUNTY, SD

CLICK HERE FOR A REAL TIME VIDEO OF THE UPDRAFT BASE OF THE HASKON/JACKSON COUNTY, SD STORM

Semi-post chase update

I didnt post a forecast or anything for today but I ended up heading out solo to central South Dakota. Definately a gamble with such a long drive but I really think it paid off. I'll keep this brief since I have many other things to be watching right now, but I intercepted to awesome storms west of Rapid City. The first one had a beautiful meso and structure with a ragged wall cloud. Due to the piss poor roads in the area I bailed on the storm rather early, but just before the tor warning was dropped (which was later re-issued). I didnt want to chance getting stuck in the hilly mud roads in the middle of nowhere. After bailed I headed west on I90 to the highway 63 exit to get gas. I watched the storm to my north on radar for a while, finally drove up 63 a bit and had a good view of the base At the time it wasnt doing much, but I followed it back to 90 and by the time I get there the base was getting much more organized. I have a lot of video from this storm and some from the first along with plenty of pics. Right now sitting just south of Kadoka, SD trying to figure out my next move. The storms moving in to SD look like they are lining out plus I dont really want to go anyfurther west since that means it will take longer to get back. Outflow from the storms my east is pretty good, east winds gusting to 30 mph. Not kicking up anything new right now, probably just gonna hang around Kadoka and see if anything happens by 9:00. If not I will head west to get closer to position for tomorrow along the SD/MN border. Definately wasnt expecting a two day solo chase trip, but i'm definately not complaining! I'll try to have pics/vid up in the next couple days, probably not tomorrow since I will be chasing.

First day of July?

Ha, feels more like the first day of October. Currently sitting at a temp of 57 with overcast skies and patchy drizzle. This pattern sucks, and we've been in it for the last few days with temps barely scraping 70 and the last couple days it's been cloudy and WINDY. Definately doesnt feel like summer any more. We had one week of warm temps, but other than that it's been a cool summer with not many chances for storms, and that trend will continue with this pattern. But, it does look like the pattern may change next week with the possibility of some storms. The problem? I'll be out of town with family next week which is starting to remind me of last summer when the same thing happened that prevented me from getting out on July 10th and 11th. Dont get me wrong, I love being with family, but my luck is the storms come when I cant be out. But maybe I shouldnt complain, I've had some decent storms and there will be more oppurtunites this season, I mean, Minnesota only has 102 storm reports so far this season, and our average the entire season is 600-700, so we have some catching up to do. Lets just hope that actually happens.

June 17th, 2009 Chaselog

Its day like Wednesday that make us storm chasers go out. In the morning and throughout the day the threat for supercells and tornadoes didnt look all that great, but with a 5% tornado risk close to home of course we headed out. Got on the road around 10:00 heading out towards west central Minnesota with no specific target city. Throughout the day we slowly ventured south based on the RUC ending up somewhere east of Windom. Between 4:30 and 5:00 we start to notice some towers going up, so we get on the east side of them to see if they would do anything. They would go up, start to get a base and lowering, and then fall apart. They did this for about 45 minutes. Finally we notice towers going up to our east-southeast. After not really paying attention to them Rich finally broke out the binoculars and could actually see the towers getting bigger in real time. After watching the towers to our west go up and collapse one last time, we decided to race off east towards the towers that were much farther away than we thought (we were near Windom and the towers to our east would go on to be the storm that hit Austin, MN). Quickly realizing we weren't going to get to the Austin storm in time we targeted more towers going up to the north of the Austin storm. On our way east the Austin storm produced a very nice, thick anvil with a classic overshooting top. The storm that we were chasing had some of the most incredible structure I've ever seen, very nice, crisp towers. After about an hour catch up game to the storm we finally intercepted it just east of Waseca. As we were just getting to the east side of the city, we heard reports over the ham radio of a waterspout over Clear Lake which is on the north side of Waseca. After getting through the last few trees in the city we got a brief view of the waterspout. We stopped about 1/2 a mile east of the city watching the base of the storm. We saw one or two brief spinups on the ground, but unfortunately there was no condensation funnel so figuring out where it was going to touch down was difficult and made it hard to get good video or pics. We also saw a couple more brief touchdowns just to our east. All in all we got 1 waterspout and 3-4 brief spin ups under the meso. After this we step-laddered it southeast until we decided to bail and head home south of Dodge Center. The entire time we tried but could never quite completely break through the hook. Not much else to say, we didnt really see much after we started driving east from Waseca. Anyways, here's some pictures.

The incredible structure of the storm:











Structure shot with a view of the base, lots of rotation.


Not exactly sure what to call this, it had a lot of rotation so my gut tells me its a funnel, but the shape of it is so weirf that I have not idea. REALLY wish we had been able to get video or better pic of it!


Really crappy picture of the same feature but much closer and the thing is hanging right on the ground. Also lots of rotation. The last thing we really saw on the storm, spent the rest of the chase trying to get ourselves through the hook.



CLICK HERE FOR SHORT VIDEO OF A BRIEF TORNADO JUST NORTH OF WASECA, MN!

Brief recap for June 17th and June 18th FCST

Ok, gotta do this quick as we have another very busy day today. But first a quick recap from yesterday.

Headed out with Rich Gudmunsen towards southwest Minnesota. Around 5:30 towards started going up over southcentral MN but we could still see them very well from where we were. After a long drive to catch up to them we finally got on a TOR warned storm near Waseca, MN. After we got through town we witnessed a water spout over I think it is Clear Lake just north of Waseca. LOTS of motion and rotation under the meso, probably the most I've ever seen. We saw a couple of circulations on the ground. Hard to say whether it was a true tornado or a landspout, but it was in the action area under the meso so who knows... Continued to follow the storm as it tracked ESE, we ended up behind the hook and for the most part we were never quite able to get through it. Didnt get much video or pics after Waseca but plenty of structure shots before we got to the town. I wanted to have pics up by now but thats just not going to happen.

Forecast for today: SPC issued a moderate risk for southern Minnesota and northern Iowa including a 15% hatched tornado risk. Its a tought forecast with the storms moving through the area right now but that will likely lay down a plethora of outflow boundaries for later today. Extreme instability expected to be in place across the risk area as strong heating and quick destabilization occur throughout the afternoon. Looks like the western edge of the MOD risk is starting to clear out so we might already have some heating occurring down there. Gonna head out today, not sure where but it seems like anywhere in the moderate risk could be a good play.

Another PDS blue box and thoughts about the end of June

The Storm Prediction Center has issued another PDS severe thunderstorm watch for eastern Oklahoma and a good part of Arkansas. Here is a link to it:
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/watch/ww0388.html
Cant remember the last time the SPC called for 105 mph winds in their text:

EXTREMELY DAMAGING THUNDERSTORM WIND GUSTS TO 105 MPH...LARGE HAIL TO 3 INCHES IN DIAMETER...AND DANGEROUS LIGHTNING ARE POSSIBLE IN THESE AREAS

This thing has already had atleast one tornado warning on the bookend vortex. Been watching it off and on this morning and it's been looking quite healthy. What is different about this MCS (and by the end of the day quite possibly derecho) is that in addition to the extreme straightline winds, it's also been producing very large hail (for any non chasers or weather weenies out there that is hail in excess of 2 inches in diameter) which is pretty strange for an MCS, although definately not unheard of. Should be interesting to see how it all turns out by tonight. I bet it would make for a fun chase as long as you didnt get smacked by 3" hail driven by 100 mph winds.

GFS is showing the end of June starting to be more active for us up here in the north. Although it is still a long ways out, it looks like we may have a couple of storm days with actual, real moisture to work with. Not a whole lot to say at this point since it is still so far out but I will say that our storm season may FINALLY start up here.

One more thing; I have some video from my chase on Sunday and I have no idea what it is. My guess is probably just the updraft, but it is hanging pretty close to the ground. I posted the link to the video below, so if anyone has an idea what it might be please feel free to leave a comment. The video was taken ~8:15 or 8:30 just west of Maysville, Missouri along highway 6. It's obviously rotating but not sure what to call it, you can tell the feature is moving south (camera is looking east) while other motion looks like it is moving east. It's a timelapse and at 6x normal speed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_ZpzkSuLYQ

Chaselog June 7th, 2009

Chased with Chris White. Our target was Holton, KS and with the long drive ahead of us we headed out a little after 8:00 am. On the way down we decided to just stay a little farther north and changed our target to Hiawatha, KS which was about a half our shorter drive. Ended up being a good decision as two storms fired just to our west. We went after the northern storm first as it looked best on radar and went TOR warned about 20 minutes later. We setup to watch the storm about 4 miles northwest of Dawson, NE along highway 4. Watched the storm for about 20-30 minutes. We didnt have the best view of the storm since we were watching it from the northeast, but we were still able to see the wall cloud. After about 30 minutes the TOR warning was dropped and the storm started to look like crap on radar so we decided to jump southeast to try to intercept the storm heading in to Missouri. By this time there was a constant stream of chase vehicles going the exact same direction we were headed. Imagine the movie Twister but times about 100. It was a fucking circus out there. But anyways, we continue east, and lose data. Not sure what happened but my phone didnt want to recognize that my computer was trying to tether it. Stupid technology. So we try to intercept the storm without data and with visual aids only. We pass Tony Perkins and his partners in Oregon, MO. They were there looking at the very large hail that had fallen. We stop to say hi and measure some of our own stones. Biggest we measured was between 2.75"-3.00" but there were reports up to 4.25" and someone at ST even said that they measured 5.25". All I can say is I'm glad we didnt get stuck in that core. The rest of the day was spent playing catchup trying to get in front of the storm but unfortunately we were never able to. We ended up just west of Maysville, MO watching the backside of the storm. I got some video of what I'm thinking is an updraft but I honestly have no idea what it is, but whatever it is, it is rotating. Just down the road from us at this point was the DOW, and numerous Vortex 2 trucks. After this we head east as I35 is just a couple miles from us, we stop to get some sunset pics and then head on home. It made me feel a little better after not getting a whole lot since nobody else really got much. Still some powerful storms but it didnt seem like anyone was able to see the storms very well. But it wasn't a complete waste, got to see the TIV in Oregon, MO, the DOW in Marysville, MO, numerous V2 vehicles, and numerous V2 probes near Oregon, MO plus chasing for the first time in Missouri, something I figured wouldnt happen unless there was a 30% hatched tornado risk. Pics below.

Wall cloud to our southwest on the northern storm:





Storm to our southeast:

Updraft on the dying storm we were just on:

Looking east at the TOR warned storm. We are just west of Maysville, MO at this point, time is somewhere around 8:15 pm. I'm not sure what this is, I have a timelapse video that shows it obviously rotating.

Sunset before we head home: