2011-05-10 Reports: MN

[Andrew Butler]

It's not every day we get dryline lps in Minnesota, otherwise I wouldn't bother with this report.

Caught the storm that put down the supposed tornado near St. Michael as it became very lp and showed off it's guts. Just a couple hailstone and a raindrop or two, amazing structure. Didn't know which way to point the camera as the Plymouth storm to my south was putting on the most amazing mammatus display I have ever seen in my life...

This was as close as it got to doing anything interesting. A little high based but had a nice little clear slot and a little funnel thing that was spinning like a top.

What a night, considering I was expecting a cap bust...

 

[Andy Jackson]

I'm not sure if I chased the same cell as Andrew, but I did end up chasing around the sherburne wildlife refuge area. I started out the day thinking the storms might fire more north, but I ended up watching many towers get destroyed by the cap. Eventually I made it to the one that was quite photogenic for a while. Andrew is right the atmosphere was just weird for MN. I also realized how much evapotranspiration probably adds to the humidity in MN. Anyway, it was a worthwhile chase even though the drive from SD was a bear.

Photos:

 

[Bob Conzemius]

Wow! Nice mammatus, Andrew!

Here's the cell that was east-northeast of St. Cloud. It certainly looked the meanest on radar and in person, but it did not get tornado-warned until after sunset. Darn. I'll take it, though. I really had fun with this storm.

-Bob

 

[Michael Stanga]

A few form yesterday:

All Photos: http://www.thewxpage.com/051011chase.html

 

[Sally Rye]

Yesterday in Minneapolis, I watched the tornado-warned cell south of the storms already discussed here. My location was on the west side of Lake Harriet in southwest Minneapolis (near Edina/St. Louis Park.)

At my location there was very little rain and a few spits of inch- and dime-sized hail.

To the northwest, I observed a rotating wall cloud:

 

[Brad Nelson]

Foley to Princeton, MN Supercell

Chased several storms yesterday and one beast of a storm from Foley to Princeton, MN that was putting out some large hail and attempted to produce more than once, but just couldn't get it done. It was looking very good at times and had a large meso...all quite photogenic.

Chase account can be found here: http://eyeonthetwister.com/2011/05/12/0510/

Video of the day:
Watch video >

 

[Nicholas_Scherber]

Got on the cell Brad was on somewhere around 7 (I think, very antsy and rushed lol). I ended up just south of the hook sitting on 23 west of princeton. By that point it was looking pretty disorganized and wasn't doing much with the acception of a wall cloud that was rather unexciting. Just before dark the wind shifted and became inflow dominant again. It got a little more organized and went tornado warned. It was getting dark at that point and i didnt have much visibility at all. Oddly enough though, i did find an image going back to a video i took to see if i could find anything later that could possibly have a tornado in it. All i can do is speculate of course and the image sucks but it was in the right area.

heres the best image i could get, did the best i could to make it more visible on Gimp.

the picture i made showing my location disappeared and since i am lazy i will post this instead. I was sitting just west of princeton and looking north. I believe it was right around 9 at the point i took the picture

Here is a shot of lightning i stole from a vid and played with gimp for 2 hours trying to figure it out, picture looks great from a distance

And here is that wonderful vidWatch video >

 

[Brad Nelson]

Got on the cell Brad was on somewhere around 7 (I think, very antsy and rushed lol). I ended up just south of the hook sitting on 23 west of princeton. By that point it was looking pretty disorganized and wasn't doing much with the acception of a wall cloud that was rather unexciting. Just before dark the wind shifted and became inflow dominant again. It got a little more organized and went tornado warned. It was getting dark at that point and i didnt have much visibility at all. Oddly enough though, i did find an image going back to a video i took to see if i could find anything later that could possibly have a tornado in it. All i can do is speculate of course and the image sucks but it was in the right area.

Interesting that you mention that point of the storm Nick, because I thought we had a noticeable funnel or lowering between the lightning flashes looking east of Hwy 169 to the north-northeast of Princeton shortly after the time of your vid. Like you mentioned, not a for sure thing by any means, but it could have been there. Certainly was the time when the hook echo was most apparent. Here's the video grab:

 

[Bill Doms]

Chase account with video can be seen on the website HERE. Hopped from cell to cell early including dumping the cell which produced the St. Michael MN torn as it went up pretty much right over my house. Base looked to high and skinny so headed up to Benton county and intercepted that sup just south of Foley. By far the slowest moving sups I have chased in MN in early may in the past decade if not longer!

Watch video >

 

[Tony Perkins]

MPX is stating that this day possibly set the May dewpoint record in Minnesota with a maximum of 78F in Waseca, MN. Despite that, many of the storms of the day had a hazeless, LP look to them, such as this dying updraft near St. Cloud:

The emerging dominant cell of the evening got interesting around Foley, and moved a total of 15 miles to the east over 90 minutes. You wont find a much better chase situation than that. The entire 'exposed' meso was rotating, although it was somewhat high based. There was no sign of a wall cloud or a funnel cloud as we observed it spinning around:

Video grab looking up at one point:

Video of the day's rotationfest:
Watch video >