Mike Hollingshead
I've been by the badlands enough times, but never took the short drive south of I90 into them. Guess I never realized the I90 part was the upper flat portion, and it all mostly sloped down into those formations. The place is amazing and I'd highly recommend anyone ever going through there to make the short trip south from Wall and take that Badlands Loop.
While there early one morning I "intercepted" a crazy "fog storm". I only call it that since the big mass of clouds formed from fast movning low clouds/fog. If anyone has any real insight on just how that thing formed I'd love to hear it and understand it. I first thought it was just lifting up those slopes. But if one watches the radar loop from Rapid City, as well as what I was seeing before this with my eyes, you can see the "outflow" or whatever that band is, nw of some storms, is moving nw to se. I would think the biggest component to the flow there would be more downsloping than it would be upsloping, as the fog slid down into the cliffy terrain.
http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/rad...=black&endDate=20080618&endTime=13&duration=2
You can see the really fast moving boundary behind those storms near I90.
http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/rad...=black&endDate=20080618&endTime=13&duration=2
Velocity doesn't indicate much to me, it shows up lightly on there. Winds were NOT light when it hit, that is for sure, lol.
On reflectivity you can also barely make out a curl behind the storms that fans from the sw to the ne. I wondered if maybe they were just converging in that location, but it doesn't seem they were as on radar it appears those two are converging se of where I was.
Maybe there is some other name for a wave like that, maybe terrain related to the Black Hills. Whatever the case, it was cool as hell watching that thing form as it lifted vertically.
http://www.extremeinstability.com/08-6-17-19badlands.htm
Whole trip photos are there, along with the youTube clip.
Not sure how long those radar links will work, as when I grabbed them just now there was only one more day back as an option.
Maybe I get how it formed there. I wonder if it was just the se moving boundary hitting just enough rain/sinking air in that location. It hit that and all just bunched up. It was moist enough, and got cool enough that night, that the se moving boundary just contained some very thick fog(it was really really thick as I looked nw before it arrived, and you could see it coming pretty fast).
While there early one morning I "intercepted" a crazy "fog storm". I only call it that since the big mass of clouds formed from fast movning low clouds/fog. If anyone has any real insight on just how that thing formed I'd love to hear it and understand it. I first thought it was just lifting up those slopes. But if one watches the radar loop from Rapid City, as well as what I was seeing before this with my eyes, you can see the "outflow" or whatever that band is, nw of some storms, is moving nw to se. I would think the biggest component to the flow there would be more downsloping than it would be upsloping, as the fog slid down into the cliffy terrain.
http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/rad...=black&endDate=20080618&endTime=13&duration=2
You can see the really fast moving boundary behind those storms near I90.
http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/rad...=black&endDate=20080618&endTime=13&duration=2
Velocity doesn't indicate much to me, it shows up lightly on there. Winds were NOT light when it hit, that is for sure, lol.
On reflectivity you can also barely make out a curl behind the storms that fans from the sw to the ne. I wondered if maybe they were just converging in that location, but it doesn't seem they were as on radar it appears those two are converging se of where I was.
Maybe there is some other name for a wave like that, maybe terrain related to the Black Hills. Whatever the case, it was cool as hell watching that thing form as it lifted vertically.
http://www.extremeinstability.com/08-6-17-19badlands.htm
Whole trip photos are there, along with the youTube clip.
Not sure how long those radar links will work, as when I grabbed them just now there was only one more day back as an option.
Maybe I get how it formed there. I wonder if it was just the se moving boundary hitting just enough rain/sinking air in that location. It hit that and all just bunched up. It was moist enough, and got cool enough that night, that the se moving boundary just contained some very thick fog(it was really really thick as I looked nw before it arrived, and you could see it coming pretty fast).
