2018-06-10 Reports: WY/SD/ND/IA/IL/MO

[Dan Robinson]

I had an unexpectedly nice sunset lightning shoot tonight from some storms that fired on a remnant outflow boundary north of St. Louis. A couple more images are posted on my blog:

http://stormhighway.com/blog2018/june1018a.php

 

[James Wilson]

We expected a lot this day but ended up with a few tries and some amazing views. Non tornado day but a very fun chase as seen below. Love chasing SD!

 

[chrisbray]

I decided what the heck and went down to intercept some early afternoon storms/line of storms in Central Illinois. Turns out my segment of the line ended up producing an EF-0 shortly after I took this video. It's too bad I was right on the edge of Champaign and could not really pursue the storm further, and my view quickly disappeared as I fell behind curtains of rain in the squall line.

In a season such as this, I might just count this, even though the tornado was not produced until a minute after I took this video!

 

[kevin-palmer]

This was a fun chase in South Dakota even though I ended up driving much farther than I expected. Admittedly I relied a bit too much on the HRRR, but it seemed to agree with the SPC that there would be at least one supercell in northeast WY. But after waiting around in Gillette and seeing only showers along the approaching cold front, I realized it was South Dakota or bust. At first I tried to catch a storm coming off the Black HIlls, but it was unimpressive, while I watched a monster supercell to the north. It really looked like an atomic bomb went off, I wish I would have stopped to get a picture from a distance. At first I thought there was no way to make it to that storm, but it barely moved, and started propogating southward. Highway 212 would take me right to the base, so I went for it. From 25 miles away I could see what looked like wall clouds and funnels. At 7pm I finally made it to the base of the storm.

From up close there was no wall cloud and I was struggling to identify storm features. But after spotting a mobile dopplar radar parked down the road, this horseshoe-shaped RFD surge became very obvious, with a short-lived funnel beneath it.


RFD and Funnel by Kevin Palmer, on Flickr

After that it became outflow dominant with a beautiful shelf cloud. I stopped just west of Faith and let it hit me. I knew I had to stay out of the core to the north with wind-driven baseballs. But when new cells popped up to my west and the line filled out, riding out a hailstorm became unavoidable. Hail was as large as 1.5" and left some dents in my car, but thankfully it wasn't wind driven.


Faith Supercell by Kevin Palmer, on Flickr

After the storm blew by there was a spectacular sunset and lightning show.


Tumultuous Sky by Kevin Palmer, on Flickr


Unreal Sunset Colors by Kevin Palmer, on Flickr


Blue Mammatus by Kevin Palmer, on Flickr


Electric Hills by Kevin Palmer, on Flickr