William Reid
EF2
Chuck Doswell, Doug Raflik, Rob Petitt and I targeted the general area of central SD today, and wound up on the tornado-producing supercell which trekked southeastward from west of Huron to east of Mitchell. We managed to get a good look at a tornado near Fulton at dusk.
We began in Lexington, NE, and the NAM suggested maybe a chase up towards the north NE PH. The RUC strongly suggested that NE was out of play, and that we needed to get up into SD. With the better upper winds over SD and some backed surface flow (with plenty of 60-plus dews) by late morning over C and E SD, we headed north through Thedford and Valentine. After a 2 p.m. lunch in Valentine, we saw that a surface low was taking shape near Philip, SD. It appeared that Pierre would be a good staging area, and a decent cu field developed there during the mid-afternoon. We were in Pierre by 6 p.m., with some towering cu around. The SPC meso-analysis page showed quite a bit of convective inhibition in C SD, though. There was no CIN a few counties to the east, and some towering cu about 75 miles to the east. We elected to start driving east in case the area to the east developed strongly...and we could always go back west if something good went up near Pierre. I liked where the persistent cu/cb was west of Huron, with the 68F-70F dew point air nearby on ESE winds. Dews near Pierre were closer to 62F.
Well, we kept driving east on 14, and the "Huron" cell slowly grew and grew. We were fully committed to it after about 40 minutes from Pierre. It became tornado-warned when we were about 30 miles NW of it, and it turned to the ESE. Needless to say, it took a while to get into position on its south and southeast side. We finally managed to do this near Forestburg. A strange-looking funnel loomed nearby as we skirted its southwest side. The storm turned harder to the right and chased us south on 37 towards Mitchell. We were in some RFD rain curtains on the SW side of a wet meso, and viewed a murky but solid funnel about halfway to the ground to the NE (back towards Artesian).
The sun had just set and this meso seemed to be fully involved with precip. We were glad to have gotten into position, but felt somewhat let down. The storm seemed to be having outflow issues, too. We drove about 6 more miles south and four miles east to get a look at the structure and the lightning as the cell moved off to our east and southeast. This was on Plano Road, I think, about six miles northwest of Fulton. Soon after stopping, around 9:45 p.m., The cell quickly organized on its western end, about 3-4 miles to our east. A somewhat narrow cone-shaped tornado developed below a tight and sculpted updraft. It moved from left to right to our due east, and lifted after about two or three minutes. I shot some semi-decent handheld vid in the low light. Thereafter, the supercell provided a continuous lightning display in the storm tower for us and the mosquitoes.
Images will have to wait awhile, unfortunately. I must sleep.
Bill Reid
We began in Lexington, NE, and the NAM suggested maybe a chase up towards the north NE PH. The RUC strongly suggested that NE was out of play, and that we needed to get up into SD. With the better upper winds over SD and some backed surface flow (with plenty of 60-plus dews) by late morning over C and E SD, we headed north through Thedford and Valentine. After a 2 p.m. lunch in Valentine, we saw that a surface low was taking shape near Philip, SD. It appeared that Pierre would be a good staging area, and a decent cu field developed there during the mid-afternoon. We were in Pierre by 6 p.m., with some towering cu around. The SPC meso-analysis page showed quite a bit of convective inhibition in C SD, though. There was no CIN a few counties to the east, and some towering cu about 75 miles to the east. We elected to start driving east in case the area to the east developed strongly...and we could always go back west if something good went up near Pierre. I liked where the persistent cu/cb was west of Huron, with the 68F-70F dew point air nearby on ESE winds. Dews near Pierre were closer to 62F.
Well, we kept driving east on 14, and the "Huron" cell slowly grew and grew. We were fully committed to it after about 40 minutes from Pierre. It became tornado-warned when we were about 30 miles NW of it, and it turned to the ESE. Needless to say, it took a while to get into position on its south and southeast side. We finally managed to do this near Forestburg. A strange-looking funnel loomed nearby as we skirted its southwest side. The storm turned harder to the right and chased us south on 37 towards Mitchell. We were in some RFD rain curtains on the SW side of a wet meso, and viewed a murky but solid funnel about halfway to the ground to the NE (back towards Artesian).
The sun had just set and this meso seemed to be fully involved with precip. We were glad to have gotten into position, but felt somewhat let down. The storm seemed to be having outflow issues, too. We drove about 6 more miles south and four miles east to get a look at the structure and the lightning as the cell moved off to our east and southeast. This was on Plano Road, I think, about six miles northwest of Fulton. Soon after stopping, around 9:45 p.m., The cell quickly organized on its western end, about 3-4 miles to our east. A somewhat narrow cone-shaped tornado developed below a tight and sculpted updraft. It moved from left to right to our due east, and lifted after about two or three minutes. I shot some semi-decent handheld vid in the low light. Thereafter, the supercell provided a continuous lightning display in the storm tower for us and the mosquitoes.
Images will have to wait awhile, unfortunately. I must sleep.
Bill Reid
