March 18th wasn’t a very clear day to me. We knew we had to hit the dryline in northwest Texas/southwest Oklahoma. The first cell of the day developed southwest of Childress and quickly became severe. As we approached it, the base was insanely high. It weakened as it crossed into southwest Oklahoma, where later that evening, it would spawn at least 3 tornadoes. We weren’t there. Instead we dropped south to the tail end storm, now southwest of Crowell, TX. This cell had great structure, produced baseball sized hail, a couple of funnels and tried very hard to produce a legit tornado. It just couldn’t do it. It later shriveled up into a photogenic LP supercell. Analysis showed that the 850 MB winds were weak during its lifetime, and then increased significantly by early evening when it died, and the original high based storm lowered and interacted with the increasing low level shear and produced its tornadoes. If I had to do it all over again, we still would have chosen the storm we did.
September 17, 2011 Colorado Supercell
September 17th was a surprise for me. I wasn’t planning on a local chase, but by mid afternoon towers developed along a boundary and I couldn’t resist. The result was one of the prettiest September supercells I have ever seen! This storm was tornado warned for 3 hours, produced golf ball sized hail and also several funnels. I intercepted it north of Seibert and followed it north of Stratton and eventually southeast of Burlington, CO.
July 18th, 2011 South Dakota Tornado
July 18th would be my last chase day for the month. We started the day in Bismark, ND. By early afternoon a boundary would set up over northern South Dakota. A tornadic supercell formed along this boundary southwest of Reva and anchored itself there for about an hour. We quickly went west and south on the Enchanted Highway and caught up to it in time to watch a substantial tornado. This supercell was fairly HP, but gave us a nice show with a moderately visible cone tornado. As it roped out, a new core on the south side of the supercell, pushed the tornado east as it became pretty visible. Most of the duration of the 12-14 minute tornado, it was poorly contrasted. Fortunately it occurred in a area that has little to no population. This storm was also highly electrified with numerous very close and intense CGs occurring.
July 17th, 2011 North Dakota Tornadoes
We started EARLY in the day on July 18th, with a tornado warned supercell riding along and slightly north of an outflow boundary from previous night’s convection. This storm had that slightly elevated look but still was tornado warned almost its entire 6-8 hour life cycle from around 10am till about 4-6pm. It did produce one tornado we could confirm. We eventually blew it off and headed for another supercell, a big beastly HP storm, south of Jamestown, ND. This storm produced an EF3 tornado north of Berlin, ND, and was a monster. As this storm lined out, another tornado warned supercell formed on the outflow from the Berlin storm and became briefly tornado warned.
One thing to note, the first two photos, the Juanita, ND tornado, are from a friend who was with us. The menacing photo of the Berlin storm and rain wrapped tornado was nuts! During that shot there were amazingly rapid rotating rain curtains that you can see rotating from left to right (south to north). The tornado was occasionally partially visible through the wrapping rain curtains.
July 16th, 2011 North Dakota Tornadofest
July 16th was probably my favorite chase day of 2011! We ended up in Bismark, ND, located just northeast of a mesolow and along a weak boundary that extended towards Grand Forks, ND. We ate lunch and waited in a local mall where it was cool. Temp and dewpoint were INSANE this day with my weather station reading 91/82! Crazy obs! The SPC mesoanalysis page showed a Sig Tor value in the teens and supercell composites in the 30s. Great number and not surprising based on the environment. With decent 500 mb winds aloft and respectable low level shear, we knew if any storm could get going in the capped environment, it would likely be a supercell and have a definite tornado potential. By mid afternoon, towers developed along the boundary and late afternoon, our supercell, the storm of the day, would form. Made it really easy for us to intercept since we were basically 30 miles from the congestus that ended up growing into our tornadic monster.
By 4:15 pm, our storm had developed a good updraft and downdraft, and it immediately developed on skinny pencil funnel that extended halfway to the ground. At 4:30 pm, a major wall cloud had formed, and was developing strong rotation. At 4:33 pm the first of 4 tornadoes touched down. It lasted until 4:38pm when it dissipated. The storm quickly cycled and dropped another much more significant tornado at 4:41pm and lasted until 4:55pm. This tornado was much stronger and developed a significant debris cloud. Both of these tornadoes occurred just northeast of Regan, ND. After the second tornado dissipated, the storm started its cycling process again, and this lasted quite awhile. It never looked like it would produce another tornado while we maneuvered to get back in front if it (lots of flooded roads to work around!), and it pummeled us with hail to golf ball size.
Finally, south of Bowdon, ND, we were able to get back in front of it and dropped south about 8 miles to get a view of the updraft. It looked in a considerably weakened state, with a strung out updraft and smaller core, but it managed to drop a truncated elephant trunk shaped tornado about 10 miles to our west. It was briefly on the ground, 2 minutes and fell apart. The southern end of the storm became very well organized as a lowering formed directly west of us and started spinning as it approached our location. You could hear the waterfall sound as the RFD blasted around the now rotating wall cloud. A substantial cone shaped funnel formed at 6:25 pm and touched down a mile to our northwest at 6:29 pm. It stayed on the ground and morphed from a truncated cone, to “Wizard of Oz” type tornado, to a stove pipe and then an amazing double walled beast as it passed less than a mile to our north! What an incredible tornado! At 6:41 pm it dissipated and the storm rapidly weakened.
At that point, we decided since we needed to be in Grand Forks for the night, we would leave our dying storm and head towards Grand Forks, only to be greeted by a tornadic supercell east of Devil’s Lake! We stayed with this cell for an hour, until it lined out and weakened. We made it to our hotel by 11PM, with all guests (and my guide!) in great spirits! It isn’t often you see what we did this day, and to have it over mainly open terrain is even better. Beautiful storm, magnificent tornadoes and little damage.
July 14th, 2011 South Dakota Supercellfest
July 14th was a day that had a lot of promise. I didn’t think there was a tremendous tornado threat with the relatively weak low level shear from surface through 850 MB, but overall shear, moisture and instability were quite supportive of nicely structured supercells. It did not disappoint! We had several nice supercell storms to watch. The first storm of the day was an LP, then classic supercell, then almost died as it ingested tons of dry air, and finally came back to life and became the storm of the day. A couple other supercells were also very pretty and quite severe. Most storms produced hail up to baseball size and were very electrified as well.
July 11th, 2011 Western, Nebraska Sculpted Supercell
July 11th resulted in a lot more than I thought we would get. Modest CAPE and shear ended up producing a few pretty supercells, one of which anchored east of Chadron, NE. Storms had decent structure and respectable electrification. We sat around Chadron for a big part of the afternoon until things finally started developing. Several funnel lookalikes occurred that were called in as funnels/tornadoes, but of course were later discounted.
June 24th, 2011 Douglas, WY Supercell
This storm was very pretty, although high based. It provided some decent lightning, which, fortunately I was able to capture a shot of. It was a severe warned high based supercell that started west of Casper and by the time it made it to Douglas, it lined out and became a gusty storm.
June 20th, 2011 Nebraska Tornadoes
This day had tons of potential. But the question was where to chase. First target of north central Kansas early on panned out as one tornadic beast formed and produced numerous tornadoes. Check out Mike Umscheid’s “Under the Meso” website for what he witnessed there. Spectacular! The second target, along I-80 from Kearney eastward also panned out. There were a couple of very tornadic supercells there that produced several large and photogenic tornadoes. The worst thing in the world would be to get caught between the targets, and low and behold, THE MOST FRUSTRATING DAY of 2011 award, goes to this day. Dave Gold came out to chase with us and too much hesitation on which target to play cost us dearly. We still witnessed 6 tornadoes, but the ole “what could have been” (and what SHOULD have been) haunts me to this day. Wow, awful results. Every chaser has a day or two each year they regret, this is THE one for me for 2011.
June 19th, 2011 Southwest Nebraska Tornadic Supercell
One of the frustrating days of the season. We sat in Ft Morgan, CO too long as storm exploded in Colorado and southwest Nebraska. We tried in vain to get to the storm near McCook, only to be greeted with a rotating storm that had already produced its last tornado. It tried several more times, but couldn’t do it. Then we watched at night as a marvelous cork screwed updraft lit up the sky.
