Quick Summary (I'll update this to a full summary tonight):
Initially played the monkey in the middle supercell due to proximity. Once it became clear this one wasn't going to get it done, we intercepted the southernmost storm - albeit in a round-about way. Intercepting from the back-side, we immediately saw a slender rope halfway to the ground (~10W of Northwood, ND) that dissipated within a minute or two. After passing through Northwood, ND, we setup shop approximately 5-6 miles ESE of town. While we weren't sure at the time, the suspicious feature wrapped in rain was the tornado that hit the mobile home park. Afterwards, we were treated to one of the most amazing electrical shows that I can remember. Too bad I left the tripod at home on accident... :evil:
Pictures:
http://people.aero.und.edu/~kennedya/2007/CHASE-082607/
Long Summary:
Cold front + stout cap... been there, done that - numerous times this season with nothing to show for my efforts. While no two setups may be exactly alike, for this reason alone, I wasn't too excited about this setup. Other than a cursory glance at data Friday night, I didn't pay too much attention to Sunday's prospects. Of course, it didn't help when I managed to break our bathroom sink counter top with my knee early Saturday morning. I spent most of the weekend purchasing and installing the new vanity, counter top, and faucet. I finished this up early Sunday afternoon and took another glance at data. It looked like a pretty late initiation if anything. Combined with the fact initiation (if it did occur) would be rather close, I took the afternoon to get some exercise in (kayaking) in the strong southerly winds.
5pm rolled around and I received a call from a friend that stuff was getting ready to pop and it was go time. I packed up at the river as quick as possible and got myself to the office to meet the other members of our group (grad students and one of their girlfriends).
We headed west on US2 and chose the "monkey-in-the-middle" storm initially due to proximity. It initially featured a firm updraft with a separated FFD which was encouraging.
Middle Storm
From our vantage point, we couldn't tell what the southernmost storm was doing, however, we did notice a
left split. The wife called and said the southernmost storm had a mesocyclone, while the
northernmost storm had a hook echo and reported funnel cloud.
What to do? I had a hard time leaving a storm that now had a weakly rotating
wall cloud.
While the middle storm did gain an
unorganized multi-tiered look to it, the inflow started to turn cold, influenced by the storm to the south. We decided to ditch it for the southern storm. After a slight miscommunication with the wife on where the meso of the southern storm was, we ended up directly behind it. With fresh rain steaming off the roads, we noticed hundreds of giant leeches crossing the road. In reality, we found out after stopping briefly that these were tiger salamanders.
As we approached the rear of the storm (20W of Northwood), we heard a radio report that a tornado was spotted 10W of town. We quickly proceeded east and threaded the needle between the FFD and the mesocyclone. As we reached ~10W of town, a slender rope formed to our south. This funnel lasted for a minute or two and reached approximately 1/2 to the ground. Considering the storm's motion was quite slow, we quickly made headway and reached Northwood around 8:30pm or so. With daylight quickly waning, and a large ominous updraft base looming to the W, we blasted east a few more miles before dropping south on a paved county road. We finally got into a relatively rain-free area in the strong, sauna like inflow ~5.5mi ESE of Northwood.
Now's the time to recall my handyman misadventure with the sink. In the process of transporting these items to our house on Saturday, I took the tripod out of the vehicle. Said tripod was now missing from my trunk. DOH! Around 8:50pm we noticed a suspicious lowering to our WNW through the almost continuous electrical show. We moved a block or two up the road where I snagged most of my nighttime shots. It's now apparent we captured the
Northwood tornado. While we had a strong suspicion something was going on, I can honestly say we were unaware of the magnitude of the situation. We stayed at this location for awhile longer until the gust front neared us. We dropped a few miles south and headed back to the interstate to make our way home.
During this stretch of road, the radio started relaying reports of significant damage in Northwood. Our friend's gf received a phone call from the hospital she is a nurse at that they were under a mass casualty alert. Once we reached I-29 we held still for awhile as more reports of funnels, tornadoes, etc. were reported just to our N. Once the main threat passed east, we blasted north to Grand Forks under the impressive lightning show to drop off our friend at the hospital to end the chase.
