06/16/07 REPORTS: ID/MT/ND/SD/WY

[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.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

What an interesting chase day. On a 1-10 scale for chasing/storms I'd give it a 1 or 2. On a photography outting I'd probably give it an 8.5 to 9, short of a 10 because I tried to do too many things, always moving from one to another, so I know I didn't do nearly as well as I could, but still should have a keeper or two...which is a change.

The whole way I kept thinking, hey, I've been wanting to visit Devil's Tower as I'd never seen it(maybe when I was like 6 months old). I got to Rapid City around 3:30 and figured it was now on the way, since storms were firing in WY. I now didn't care how great the storms even were, I wanted visit the tower and shoot it.

While there I tried to warn people of the severe storm, as I walked back down from being right up against the tower...most didn't care...and kept dragging their kids up there. I tried to chase that storm, but was stopped by an amazing view back towards the Tower and other peak thingies. It sucked, flip around and shoot this amazing landscape, in the rain, or chase this storm which is now getting interesting. I flipped around and shot the scene, getting soaked with my window open. I then flipped around and chased the storm driving in hail forever. East of Sundance I kept thinking, this stuff has no real hope and I bet there will be a hell of a sunset back at the tower. So I flipped around again and drove back to Devil's Tower.

A very nice sunset was taking place as I arrived. I got some of it, with mammatus trying to glow orange, with the Tower in the foreground. I should have stayed right where I was with the wider shot, but I thought something better might be found in the park, next to the tower. I was worried the mammatus would looks sweet right above the peak. They never did and I missed some good scenes being close.

Then a bit after sunset a rainbow formed to the south, embedded in this red mammatus and virga. My earlier hope was to stay at the tower till dark and maybe get very lucky and have lightning with it. This looked toast at this point, with the mcs in western SD now. So I waited longer trying to do some long shutter blur of the clouds with it. Then I noticed somthing very high that I thought could be a bit of a base of a crap tower WAY up there. Then it flickered! I was so pumped but didn't think it would work out well. I was wrong. Next thing I know, CG! Right next to the tower. It was just an awesome time right at this point as CG after CG hit around the tower. Most were striking JUST south of me however(while I faced the tower to the nw), out of the shot. I lost count of how many were less than 1 mile away. I was in the park, parked right next to the tower during this, not far in(for those that have been there). I wound up with 5 or 6 stills with a cg with Devil's Tower. The one wasn't a mile from me and had to be like 1/4 mile or so, directly on the other side of the tower.

It was just crazy that little area of convection fired right where it did behind the line, and how CG happy it was. As I got rained on I tried to move north, up to the parking area right by the tower. I hoped to change my angle on it and get some of the many to my south. Well I never realized that was the area that closed. I was the only car up there, in what was a completely full parking area earlier. It was a smidge eerie being the only person up there, at night, right next to this big strange thing with the name DEVIL's Tower....and the now occasional very close CG. Then as I drove back down, fog started to form on the road.

Will post images once I'm back home. Don't have anything on this laptop to do so at the moment. Man, I wish I lived closer to this area.

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

A good chase, but definetly not worth the long haul to chase here. We were on the first severe warned cell near Gillete. It was pathetic, but quickly reorganized and produced a large funnel that was sure to touchdown, but didn't. Then, while approaching another Tor warned cell a new storm blew up right in front of us and produced quite the show. It was spitting out so much CG it was making us nervous. Multiple strikes every few seconds it was a crazy sight as the storm sucked in inflow and developed rotation and a few funnels, we are near Upton, WY now. Then we punched the core and expierenced very hard hailstones that might have busted the windshield if they were just a bit bigger. We then found ourselves caught in the Black Hills where we winded our way to Rapid City where we grabbed some dinner and spent the night in Chamberlain, SD.

Will post video when I get it up of the awesome supercell!

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

http://www.extremeinstability.com/07-6-16.htm

A 3 page account with pictures is now up.

Rest of the images with text at the link.... http://www.extremeinstability.com/07-6-16.htm

 

[Gerrit Gulden]

I figured I would add a few Cumulinimbus shots from this day. I actually spent the day Painting a friends house. Had I not promised the friend I would help, I probably would have ended up in Montana somewhere.

Anyways, Around 2-3pm things started getting interesting over towards the Idaho/Wyoming Border. There were two Convective lines, one to my north and one to my east. I paid attention to the one to my east since it had the most visible cumulous and Cumulinimbus.

The track for these storms was Southwest to Northeast. These storms ended up going Severe into Northwestern Wyoming and dropped up to 1 inch hail. Had I not been as tired as I was after painting, I would have tried to catch up with them. Was nice tho to watch the convection from my own backyard and frontyard.

More photos can be found via
http://www.severeidaho.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=7


-gerrit