Chasecation June 5th - 10th 2011 Day 4... the 9th... Big Oklahoma Storm

On the 9th we had a pretty amazing storm chase that was almost not to have been.
Most of the time we get out ahead of these storms and photograph them as they approach. But this time we really did chase them down.

We originally had the idea of taking I 70 out of Ft. Morgan CO in the early morning to Central Kansas where there was a good chance of severe weather in the evening hours. But, after looking at the HRRR and a few other models I became increasingly concerned about a large MCS forming in that portion of the state. It looked to me that the better target would be down in Oklahoma into the Texas Panhandle where storms would be more discrete. So, that is what we opted for with a new target of Amarillo Texas.

I wish I had taken some pictures on the way down through Colorado and the Oklahoma panhandle. The drought in that area has just been terrible and the land clearly showed it. We had a smoke filled sky from New Mexico overhead and a brown landscape that looked like it belonged somewhere in the Middle East. Numerous dust devils were also observed. The entire trip up to that point had been beautiful landscape and now we were driving across Mordor.

We approached Amarillo from the north on 287 hoping that we wouldn't be too late for storms. By the time we reached the city it was at least 6pm. Storms had already begun to blow up east of the city near the OK/TX boarder and initially I hoped that we could catch the ones south of I 40 on the Texas side.
However, it began to become clear that these storms would not develop further than the little showers they already were. Meanwhile another complex of storms was to the north of I 40 in Oklahoma... about an hour from us. I was able to convince James that these storms would be the best play for the day and he (despite being exhausted) kept the vehicle pointed at Oklahoma.

When we arrived it was clear that these were also high based storms like the one witnessed yesterday. Except that the Oklahoma cluster had considerably more instability to work with along with marginal shear. Dewpoints were probably not more than 65 degrees and combined with a temperature of near 100 degrees there was quite a large DP/Temp spread which is probably the most likely cause for the high bases.

One of the southern cells in the cluster quickly took over and began to rotate. This prompted the Norman Office to issue a tornado warning right at about the same time we arrived in Elk City to photograph it.

Like the May 19th evening supercell this one had insane inflow as well. Gusts were probably near 50mph.

When we got back to the hotel room in Clinton we examined the distance we drove from Amarillo where we first noticed the developing storms to Elk City and marveled that we even made it at all.

Looking back I can only conclude one of two things about our trip:
We were either extremely lucky to have seen all that we saw during the course of the adventure, or God was extremely gracious to us. I may get pats on the back for my forecasting skills but lets just say confidence in many of the forecasts was quite low and I was not the one who put the storms there... or even got us there.

Many thanks to James for supplying the vehicle and the driving for this season, and also for Justin coming along and sharing it with us as well as walking away with numerous amazing images (not to mention helping pay for the trip). I've learned a lot about photography from those guys and the images they produce.

Thanks should also be given to God for his incredible creation and for keeping us alive and well for the entire adventure... and for the privilege of even getting to have such an adventure. 

And thanks goes to Karen as well for letting us barrow James for five days.

Chasecation June 5th - 10th 2011 Day 3... the 8th... LP in Colorado

The 8th turned out to be a great day across East-Central Colorado despite the storm being hardly severe. At least, other than quarter size there wasn't much to talk about.
The storm did look pretty neat and the set up was something I had never experienced before. From a Meteorological perspective at least it was quite fascinating.

In the day leading up to this event it was quite clear that I really didn't want to chase anything in Nebraska or Kansas along the front. If I remember right the concerns were:
1: Lack of directional shear
2: Lack of upper level support since the main trough was still over the rockies.

Well, this left pretty much nothing to play across the plains. So, we decided to do what a few other chasers had been discussing and what SPC outlined in their outlook... upslope in northeast Colorado/southeast Wyoming BEHIND the cold front.

Across most of the plains the winds behind the cold front were very much out of the north. But the cold front bent back towards to the northwest across Colorado with easterly flow behind it. Dewpoints looked to be in the low 50's or upper 40's at best with temps in the low 80's.

Since the winds were easterly they were running this air right up along the front range and Palmer Divide. And these geographical features would be our means to force air to rise.

The day of the event actually yielded mid to upper 40 dewpoint air only. But we did manage to squeak out the 1000 j/kg. With the exceptional wind shear I was pretty excited.

We arrived in Ft. Collins around 3-4pm I believe with the first set of thunderstorms firing just west of Denver. It was pretty cool to be able to see the mountains with thunderstorms blowing up along them. We eventually noticed on radar the storm of the day just east of Denver (probably close to 4pm) and we began positioning for it.

We had a lot of fun with dirt roads since the one road option we had south of Ft. Morgan to position ourselves on basically turned into a dirt road after several miles and then it was nothing but dirt after that.

The storm itself we didn't really see until we were well south of Ft. Morgan. We saw a lot of anvil blow off that reminded me of the cirrus and alto-stratus we typically see in the winter time. (Very light and feathery compared with most anvil blow off, yet not very high in altitude). The anvil was considerably darker and thicker of to the west with a rounded flat base to it at the back. It took me a minute or two to realize that the flat base of the anvil was in-fact the rain free base of our supercell we were seeing on radar.

It was kind of a combination of the storm being high-based and the anvil being relatively low.
The storm itself really didn't change much with time. It seemed to maintain a very consistent low precipitation supercell profile with most of the rain being virga and blowing well down shear of the updrafts. It did manage some brief areas of rotation that were fun to watch, but the RFD never cut into the meso (another classic symptom of the LP). 

The storm finally dissipated around sunset somewhere east of where we started. More fired in the evening back to the west, but we really weren't interested in chasing any more due to the exhaustion of the days drive. After supper in Ft. Morgan we did decide to try for some lighting near town, but it never amounted to much for me.

Chasecation June 5th - 10th 2011 Day 2... the 7th

Since storms were expected to be in North Dakota into Minnesota we opted to not go tearing after them only to come tearing right back for tomorrows event (which we still hadn't nailed down).  So, we took the day off from chasing and simply went site seeing in the Rapid City area. We visited Sturgis, Devil's Tower, Mt. Rushmore, and the Badlands.

Unfortunately James' National Parks pass didn't get us into the parking lot at Mt. Rushmore so, we simply dove on by without snapping a single photo. The faces were in deep shadow any way.

These will be larger images since the small "for web" versions just can't do the scenes justice.

Couldn't upload the large version of this next one.

It was nice to see some spectacular scenes without having to be rushed for a change.
We stayed the night again in Rapid City and then headed out early the next morning for Colorado to chase upslope storms.

Chasecation June 5th - 10th 2011 Day 1

This was a real treat. Four days outside of our typical chasing grounds with the 5th day being back in Oklahoma. We left Sunday the 5th and came home on the 10th.

This was the basic outlook I put together the day before we left. Basically it was all based off of the GFS and NAM. So, some might consider this not so much an actual forecast as an interpretation of data.

What amazed me is how well the models performed overall (and my interpretation wasn't all that bad either). 
Monday was basically right on but needed to be extended into Montana. Tuesday mainly needed to be more into North Dakota. Wednesday... well... that turned out to be more upslope in Colorado and Wyoming. But Thursday was right on... or very nearly.

Day one:
After spending Sunday driving into Nebraska we then set out into South Dakota on Monday anticipating supercells across the northern and western portions of the state. There was a frontal boundary draped across the northern areas with easterly flow towards the black hills along and ahead of it throughout the state. Wind shear was not overly impressive but favorable for some rotating storms up near the front and towards the black hills.

We spent a large chunk of the afternoon sitting in Midland north of I 90 trying to decide where to go. This was one of those "sit and watch visible satellite" days. Towards evening it was begining to look like our best bet was to take I 90 to Rapid City where the most pronounced cumulus were due to the forcing along the black hills. That easterly wind was helping to ram the warm moist air up against the mountains helping to erode the cap in that area.

However, as time passed and we reached Rapid City big HP supercell-like storms erupted just south of the South Dakota boarder in Nebraska. They were basically over the unchaseable sand hills we had driven up through earlier in the day. I really didn't want to go after them due to the better shear being further west near Rapid City and what began to be storm initiation over the black hills.

The storms over the black hills really didn't get organized though for a good long while and one can't chase in the black hills very easily. And as we drove west the storms to our southeast continued to get bigger... but still lacked any real organization.

After supper in Rapid City it looked to me that we might have busted since the cells over to our west continued to not do much of anything. Still, there was one complex of tightly packed cells in a little line trying to pass over the mountains. I figured we'd at least want to photograph lightning out of that apparently disorganized mess if nothing else.

There is one thing that I had overlooked that James had informed us about earlier:
The sun takes much longer to set in the northern plains than it does in the southern during this time of year. That became pretty apparent after the first day.

By 7pm-ish we had our first cluster of small cells coming over the mountains to the south of Rapid City and we headed south to meet them. These basically had formed a beautiful gust front that, at first, didn't look impressive. Once we were south of town a little ways it quickly came fully into view and we were stunned by its beauty.

This is one of the few moments where I have actually felt poetic... but even I am so bad at poetry none came to me. And therefore you will be spared any.

Well... no... I actually won't spare you completely:

The heavens declare the glory of God, 

and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Psalm 19:1

In Hebrew, at least, it is poetic... and true... so very very true...

I still can't figure out which of the two panoramas above I like most and whether or not it would be worth going back and doing HDR. Oh well... I'll figure it out sooner or later.

Normally when I see the leading edge of the outflow push that far ahead of the precipitation the storms doom is nigh. Or something like that. However, this guy kept firing cells on its leading edge for the next couple of hours or more. In fact, for all I know this small complex of storms traveled at least another hundred miles before dissipating sometime after dark.

Another interesting phenomena were the nearly continuous downbursts occurring due to a lot of evaporation of the precipitation in the mid levels. This little "bow echo" was severe warned for high winds and we got a brief taste of it with little rain.

I just have to say that driving underneath an incredibly high based shelf cloud with phenomenal structure in the rolling green plains of South Dakota was probably one of the most incredible experiences I have ever had to date.


This guy is KUDX and he provided all of our radar data for this evening. The HDR attempt on him is kind of sloppy... but then again it was done just to figure out how this HDR stuff works.

We had some amazing light after the storm had passed on the South Dakota hills. Kind of funny that I thought this first image was going to be the best with the HDR. But I was terribly wrong. With the second I just didn't know what I was doing which is why I stopped work on it, then did the first, and then went back to it after getting comfortable with photoshop's method of HDR.

Some of my favorite images to date and all from South Dakota. Still blows my mind that I was actually there.