Billy Griffin
What a day! Never thought I'd start a chase by leaving OK the night before, flying in to Seattle, driving almost 1,000 miles to Glasgow, MT!
Finally caught up with the "beast of the day" near Fresno, MT (west of Havre - spelling?) Only witnessed one, brief tornado, but some others - I'll have to double check on video. This storm really surprised me. Amazing structure, strong inflow, very low wall cloud from time to time, but low-level rotation just couldn't seem to get its act together. It reminded me of the Canadian, TX storm about a month ago we were all on, where the storm just kept getting undercut and would become outflow dominant. The anvil on this thing looked like it shot way up into Canada for thousands of miles! I shoot with a 16-35mm with a full-frame DSLR, and still couldn't fit the whole thing in the frame!
Terrain was quite a challenge, as it's much more hilly than I had anticipated. Every time I would get a good view of the base, another rise of hills would obstruct my view. I didn't dare challenge the hail core, as some local reports were stating grapefruit or larger. Never could confirm that obviously. The largest hail I observed was slightly smaller than golfball, and that was very brief. Traffic sure wasn't an issue.
Only confirmed tornado I observed was out over wide open country, the closest town I think was Beaverton or Tampricro (again, spelling?). I do remember it was about 30 minutes before I got blasted with winds and rain in Glasgow.
Power was knocked out in parts of town (Glasgow), but finally caught a hotel room here at the Sportsman in Malta, MT. I am indeed, at the center of the middle of nowhere! One of the best lightning shows to my east now - may step outside and grab a few more stills. I've filled up 3 1GB memory cards.
Will post photos and video links tomorrow or later when arriving back in Seattle. The sad thing is, I have to fly back to OKC on Monday AM for a drive back down to Longview, TX. Exhausted, but hey, still batting 100% for the year! 5 chases have now yielded 20 tornadoes for 2007 - I'm pretty lucky on those counts.
Finally caught up with the "beast of the day" near Fresno, MT (west of Havre - spelling?) Only witnessed one, brief tornado, but some others - I'll have to double check on video. This storm really surprised me. Amazing structure, strong inflow, very low wall cloud from time to time, but low-level rotation just couldn't seem to get its act together. It reminded me of the Canadian, TX storm about a month ago we were all on, where the storm just kept getting undercut and would become outflow dominant. The anvil on this thing looked like it shot way up into Canada for thousands of miles! I shoot with a 16-35mm with a full-frame DSLR, and still couldn't fit the whole thing in the frame!
Terrain was quite a challenge, as it's much more hilly than I had anticipated. Every time I would get a good view of the base, another rise of hills would obstruct my view. I didn't dare challenge the hail core, as some local reports were stating grapefruit or larger. Never could confirm that obviously. The largest hail I observed was slightly smaller than golfball, and that was very brief. Traffic sure wasn't an issue.
Only confirmed tornado I observed was out over wide open country, the closest town I think was Beaverton or Tampricro (again, spelling?). I do remember it was about 30 minutes before I got blasted with winds and rain in Glasgow.
Power was knocked out in parts of town (Glasgow), but finally caught a hotel room here at the Sportsman in Malta, MT. I am indeed, at the center of the middle of nowhere! One of the best lightning shows to my east now - may step outside and grab a few more stills. I've filled up 3 1GB memory cards.
Will post photos and video links tomorrow or later when arriving back in Seattle. The sad thing is, I have to fly back to OKC on Monday AM for a drive back down to Longview, TX. Exhausted, but hey, still batting 100% for the year! 5 chases have now yielded 20 tornadoes for 2007 - I'm pretty lucky on those counts.