The June 24, 2001 Canadian Supercell
A relatively benign weather pattern in the U.S. forced us north to the U.S./Canadian border where we intercepted a rather nice looking almost-tornadic supercell that formed west of Oxbow, Saskatchewan and moved generally east and then east-southeast, crossing the border at Sherwood, ND. It was the first Canadian funnel cloud for Bill and I, and the second Canadian Supercell since June of '99 with tour 4.
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| The Tour 5 group makes the day's forecast. I am so proud of how much they've learned on this tour! | By early evening we are sitting at the U.S./Canadian border, watching Canadian flags a-flying in the strong southeasterly breeze, a wind that is blowing moisture into Canada. | Convinced that thunderstorm development is imminent, we drive north into Canada along Hwy 9 from the Northgate port-of-entry. Here we are looking at the growing congestus to our north. | Just southwest of Oxbow, SK we can look directly up the southern edge of a developing supercell storm. |
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| The base of the storm thickens, with various lowerings forming under the southwestern flank. | Rising scud is seen beneath the updraft. | We turn east onto Hwy 18 and look back to our southwest at the somewhat outflow dominant but pretty storm's leading edge. | A persistent inflow tail races into the storm from the northeast along the forward flank precipitation core. This feature maintains our interest in the storm's tornado potential. |
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| Here is one of several laminar inflow tails (beaver tails) feeding into the storm from the east. | The tour participants watch the storm. | There is a persistent trend for wall clouds to develop on the north side of a storm-scale dry slot that is cutting into the rear edge of the updraft. | Note the large sun-filled concavity in the updraft base's center. This is a very common feature of a large class of supercell storms that have a bit too much outflow to produce a significant tornado. The portion of the updraft base to the north (right) of the dryslot is the place to watch. |
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| Sure enough, a cigar-shaped funnel cloud emerges from the dryslot to our west-southwest. This funnel cloud is about 2 miles southwest of Carnduff, SK. | The funnel cloud reaches very close to ground. Many storm chasers would count this as a tornado but we're not going to do that because the trees prevent us from seeing whether there is any debris at ground level beneath the funnel. | Again, the funnel's tip is perilously close to the ground. We're not going to pad our tornado count with this one. | Nice, yellow-hued funnel! |
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| Another shot of this very pretty funnel cloud. | The funnel dissipates, but a new large wall cloud has rapidly formed to its northeast. However, very little rotation is evident in this feature. | A closeup of the non-rotating wall cloud. | A wider perspective of the wall cloud and larger storm structure. The storm is now moving somewhat south of due east and it is time to think about getting back into the U.S. to stay ahead of it. |
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| Realizing that it is close to 10 pm CDT and that our border crossing will soon be closed, we high-tail it south on Hwy 8 towards the U.S. border, shooting video of the supercell storm along the way. | Another shot of this very pretty, circular supercell updraft as we approach Sherwood, ND. Note the ominous wall cloud on the storm's northeastern edge. | Looking northwest towards Sherwood at the north-end mesocyclone. Note the multitude of inflow tails feeding the storm from the east. | The mesocyclone fills with precipitation, which wraps around the strong low-level ciculation. |
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| Continuing east on CR 1 just inside the U.S., we look back to our west at the nice supercell updraft faintly backlit by the waning light. It is now about 10:30pm CDT. | One last view of the slightly tilted supercell updraft. Looking west from Hwy 256 south of Antler in northwestern Bottineau County, ND. | Radar view of the storm crossing the border. |