2011-06-12 REPORTS: WY/SD

[Robert Edmonds]

Caught a very nice tornado near the intersection of 18 and 85 in WY. Here is the photo will expand on post tonight and on blog. Because of the roads we couldn't stay with the storm.

Photo has been touched up just a little.

The full sequence of photos from the first development of the funnel:
http://on.fb.me/jWXfBN

[added a little to blog, but got in late so will add more later]

 

[Robert Edmonds]

A video that my customer took of the Mule Creek Junction, WY tornado. We also later observed a small gustnado in a near by field, after crossing over to SD. We were a little closer to the gustnado than comfort so we don't have many good quality images of the little dust whirl.

It took a while to work our way to this target. We left the La Junta/Kim, CO storm a little early the day before in hopes to work our way north. Believing the eastern KS target for Sunday would be capped, I focused primarily on getting to where the 700 and 800mb winds picked up in SD. In the morning we woke in Ogallala, NE. Going to bed my intention was to drive directly north from there. After doing a morning check of the models, I saw the HRRR was showing storms in eastern Kanasas. Holding to the belief that the cap would hold, I had us keep moving north, with a minor adjustment of instead going to west side of the Black Hills. This was because the convection was suppose to develop first west of the Black Hills (because of the change in what I believe was the location of a weak low to the west), and I believed our best chance was to catch a storm as it was developing. To back this up there were some strengthening cumulus on satellite, and observed from the vehicle. This was the primary reason we didn't go further north, where perhaps the helicity was supposed to be a little better. With my target being Newcastle, I had us stop at Mule Creek Junction because of developing storms to our south. There was also no longer any signs of cumulus or any developing updrafts to our north. With the storm beginning to move over us, we drifted slightly to the east, where we watched this beautiful tornado develop!