7/13/10 REPORTS: ND/MN

[Tyler Burg]

Got on the Enderlin, ND supercell around 5pm, really surprised it didn't produce a tornado or two between Enderlin and Leonard. Had some cool structure most of the day, although I can't believe it was tornado warned near Walcott and as it crossed the border, didn't look very impressive. Gained a bit of strength later on near I94. Full account will be up later on my site. Here are a few pics from the day...

Near Enderlin...

East of Comstock, MN

Barnesville, MN

EDIT: full report up here.... http://www.tonightssky.org/accounts/071310.html

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Chased same storm as Tyler. The whole way there the airmass just felt screwed/cool for as hot of 700mb temps as were in the area. It became more and more clear the only play was going to be north of the hot 700s some...ND. But even up there the air felt and looked real bad.

I was in ND about 30 minutes out yet and just about turned back for home because it looked so bad on radar and the air looked horrible...cool and stable wavey clouds(you know those clouds that always get posted with the whole "what are these called"....and the big long debate ensues clouds.....the "neat" ones chasers see all the time on bad chase days...lol). Well that all got pushed ne and the storm seemed to get some decent air to use ahead of it. When I first saw the storm I was like, heck this ain't so bad and almost looks like it has supercell characteristics yet....which was quite surprising. This was just before the storm decided to get its act together.

From the point I got on it onward, was actually pretty fun. This messy shelf thing turns into a nice barrel shaped supercell, cycling quickly and wrapping back areas into the rain dump in the rfd. Ahead of it hail started to fall, no sprinkles, just hail. Hail eventually got decently big, with some looking to be just under baseball. I then see some ducks flying in that stuff! I zoomed in on them and shot video, thinking, one of these is going to just drop from the sky any second now.

On the way home I thought, well that was at least worth it. I then thought of that whole "would you have driven that far if you knew that is what you'd see" thing. It was interesting the previous feeling was that it was worth it. But once you think back on if you knew that is what you'd see would you make the drive, then the answer tends to become no lol. So not sure now. But it wasn't bad!

Chasing sure is different now. Was pretty damn surprised at how many chasers were chasing ND in July. I'd say it was what like a May chase in NE in 2004 would have been like. Seriously similar. July 13 in sw SD last year I thought was a lot for July but this was a lot more than that. So maybe the western locations are still a little safe for less chaser chasing in the summer.

 

[Chris Allington]

Not much to say that hasn't already been said. As Mike said, it cycled many times very quickly... here are a few shots:

As it was passing near Enderlin:

RFD cut and sun beams west of Wolcott:

One of its weaker phases as we cross into MN at Christine:

One of my favorites from the day:

 

[Skip Talbot]

I sat in Aberdeen all day watching the suckers up north in ND mess around with that junky storm, until I realized I was the sucker. SD was not going to initiate so I hauled ass up to North Dakota and caught the southern storm a few miles from the MN where I chased it until dark. Not a bad chase considering I almost completely busted. The road network was quite nice up in northwest MN too.

I thought this was a half assed attempt at a wall cloud, with what looked like a tail cloud trying to form on the right as it pulled in air off the forward flank:

I also got this weird optical effect looking north at the edge of the forward flanking downdraft. I guess the light is diffracting on the edge of the precip shaft:

 

[Mike Heitz]

well if i had my camera handy i'd upload the pics but basically the same as everyone else, that slow moving supercell was certainly photogenic but never produced. Did anyone hit the left mover that had the report of a tornado? It really was sad to watch this thing move at 25mph for 4 hours and rotate and cycle forever and never even produce a decent funnel. It was a great chasing environment just not a great chase producer, and i was surprised at the amount of chasers at least everyone got some great structure shots and tons of footage due to how slow the storms moved.

 

[Mike Heitz]

skip your first shot sums up the day, at least a dozen times a wall cloud feature looked promising and never ended up producing i was sure that at some point this storm would produce but just had a decent meso and wall cloud mess that constantly was undercut by the rfd i think that it being originally an elevated storm and the cloud deck it threw out kinda messed with the pre storm environment it never tapped the total PE that was out there.

 

[Skip Talbot]

Here's the timelapse footage from the camera dome:

 

[Bill Doms]

Not a whole lot to add. What a surprising change from what looked like junk southwest of Valley City, ND to where we dumped it at Pelican Rapids, MN. Really surprised it didn't tornado northwest of Enderlin, ND as hard as the RFD cut it....too hard.

Full chase account here with a time lapse video collage.