William Reid
EF2
One more very impressive storm to wrap up an unbelievably successful June for me. I liked the area along the western ND border with MT, from about Baker to Beach. This worked out perfectly, as storms went up near Glendive and became tornado-warned (funnel cloud sightings and Doppler-indicated). The problem was that we were still motoring north through NW SD and SW ND when the "Hodges" storm was providing all of this fun. (We had stopped at Mount Rushmore briefly after leaving Chadron about 11 a.m.) We went west from Bowman to Baker, had a quick pit stop, drove north on 7, and were greeted by a brand new and impressively structured supercell. We stopped 18 north of Baker and set up, and not three minutes later, a skinny tornado was spawned beneath a large wall cloud which was somewhat obscured by precip. This was a cell which was south of the originally tornado-warned storm farther north, near Hodges. And, this was about as far from any Doppler radar as any place on the Plains. We tried to phone it in to NWS Glasgow, but had no cell service! (We reported the event later from Baker.)
We stayed with the cell as it neared us along the road east to Carlyle. It looked like it meant business again as a new meso area developed just to our north, but surface rotation was not observed. I thought we were in trouble as the road network ran out to the east, and the core was right behind us. We got south to Ollie just as nickel hail began to fall. We followed a rancher into his driveway and he pointed us into his barn! We were safe! And, the storm seemed to lose steam for some reason. We had somehow stumbled upon it at its best. Images here:
http://stormbruiser.com/chase/2009/06/30/june-30-2009-carlyle-mt-tornadic-supercell/
Bill Reid
We stayed with the cell as it neared us along the road east to Carlyle. It looked like it meant business again as a new meso area developed just to our north, but surface rotation was not observed. I thought we were in trouble as the road network ran out to the east, and the core was right behind us. We got south to Ollie just as nickel hail began to fall. We followed a rancher into his driveway and he pointed us into his barn! We were safe! And, the storm seemed to lose steam for some reason. We had somehow stumbled upon it at its best. Images here:
http://stormbruiser.com/chase/2009/06/30/june-30-2009-carlyle-mt-tornadic-supercell/
Bill Reid
