6/17/07 REPORTS: NE / SD / ND / MN

[Matthew K. Hartman]

Chased today across mostly east-central North Dakota with a friend of mine and a co-worker. We generally targetted a corridor from Cooperstown, ND to Hillsboro, ND. Left town (Grand Forks) around 3:30pm and were southbound on I-29 when what became the Crookston, MN storm mushroomed. Literally exploded out of nothing in about 15 minutes and went tornadic shortly after 4:00pm. Was able to observe the tightening meso and the rope tornado southwest of Crookston. In the haste of flipping through the freq's and into the GFK Skywarn-net, wasn't able to get any photos unfortunately. I flip the HT over to the net, I look up, and the TOR had already dissipated. Didn't last but maybe 40 seconds, but it was a nice rope, to say the least.

Attempts at chasing later convection didn't pan out as we then migrated south and westward to slightly west of the tiny town of Galesburg, ND where we could find some slight elevation on the edge of the valley. Short-story: cap held strong until around 6:00, clouded over, towers started developing to our northwest, but didn't really organize until/towards sunset. The AccuWeather Premium "demo" on my Verizon package was actually quite helpful today, but very doubt I will pay the $3.99/mo subscription for any further service. It was showing organizing storms up in the Devils Lake Basin. We tried to drift northward as we started back... but couldn't really see much with the ungodly amount of low-level moisture and fog - especially as we traversed the warm front north of Hope, ND. We had visibilities down to 3/4 of a mile for a short-stretch along Highway 32. It was quite interesting...

Will likely have a log and photos of what I was able to shoot up on the blog, web-site, and gallery tomorrow.

Personally, not bad for a local chase to see my first TOR since April of 2004!

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

Probably my quickest and shortest distance chase ever. Saw the Crookston storm initate and we rounded up the troops to head out. Missed the tornado by 15min, and by that time all the convection crpaped out. Ate at McDonalds and headed back home.

A couple of hours later a new storm went up near Devils Lake. Given the environment we figured we would give it a shot. No go. Ended up in a fog bank, and then the entire atmosphere spontaneously convected on the way home.

 

[Justin Turcotte]

Matt was my navigator while I was at the wheel. The forecast I posted a few days ago panned out pretty well except storms fired along the trough/front later than expected courtesy of a bit stronger cap and perhaps slightly later arrival of CAA. The Crookston tornado went down and up about as fast as one can read this sentence. In fact the whole storm went up and down extremely fast. I've never seen a tornado or tornado producing storm die as quick as this one. I saw the funnel come down and quickly pulled the car over. As soon as I stepped out the funnel was completely gone and the meso simply vanished. Somehow another chaser was in exacly the right place at the right time to bag some nice pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/bgjerdingen/ClimaxCrookstonTornado
I'll thumb through mine in the morning and see if there is anything worth adding to the post.

Edit: Looks like I captured the very last moment of the skinny rope funnel...

 

[Laura Hedien]

http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?t=12945

We called Mobridge SD as our target and there were 2 reported tornadoes 11 and 31 miles from there.
LOL.. of course we didn't see them though. The cells we were gawking at had ZERO rotation and were lining out at the reported time.
I guess if you can't see them, at least call them! Makes it less painful.

Laura

 

[stephanieschweitzer]

This was a short chase. Around 7:00PM I Drove 3 miles and caught up with the Blue Earth Co. MN storm that went severe. Showed some slight rotation about 5 m. to the north, but that would have meant a punch, and this was a nasty looking storm. Drove 20 SE and caught up with it in far Eastern Blue Earth Co. Saw a funnel that went rain wrapped in about a min. Decided to abandon ship. Got a few nice structure shots.

And this is the last shot of the night taken by my chase partner.

 

[Matthew K. Hartman]

Logs, photos, and Archives...

I've finally posted my chase log and a few select photos from my 06/17 chase. In addition, I've posted a log from my Memorial Day (05/28) chase across northeastern ND and photos from this as well.

Chase logs can be found on my web-site at:
http://www.mhartman-wx.com/mwx_chasing.html

Photos can be found in the Photo Gallery:
http://photos.mhartman-wx.com

*Note I've also added other random photos (mostly pictures to include in the Lightning Albums) but also a few from early convection that passed over Grand Forks on June 10th. Simply manuever to the Lightning Gallery, or click on the "Last Uploads" in the menu to see these.

Also... I've added archived data from both events (05/28 and 06/17) and these can be found in my archives:
http://www.mhartman-wx.com/mwx_archives.html

Enjoy!