July 18, 2011 Chase

Date: July 18, 2011
Location: Reva, SD
Tornadoes: One (but had multiple vortices that touched the ground)
Hail: 2.5 inches

Hey everyone. I apologize for not uploading this earlier. This is a storm that we chased in Reva, SD last July.  There was some incredible structure that was seen.  A beautiful multivortex tornado dropped down right in front of us and we saw some very large hail.  After that storm was seen, we continued our trek...on an unpaved, untreated road.  That was a great adventure. But the car was alright and we got home safely.

 

Wall cloud in Reva, SD.

Same wall cloud gaining organization.

Funnel!!!

TORNADO!!!

This storm dropped some very large hail.

Another wall cloud in the distance.

Rain shaft.

Precipitation falling from the storm. Who knows what was going on in there.

Shelf cloud.

Cold air funnel.

Rainbow to end our awesome chase.

Happy Birthday to Me!!!!

 Tornadoes: 0
Wind: 60 knots
Hail: 1.5 inches (golfball), some larger

So June 24th is my birthday, and not only did my folks come out to Rapid City to visit me, we got slammed by an awesome storm!!! A mesocyclone was over my apartment, we got very heavy rain and lightning, but we also got some big butt hail that was between 1.5 and 2 inches in diameter. I was a very happy chicka.

© Heather Caye 2011

 Storm in the distance. This was not the one that hit Rapid City (it was to the east of town).

Storm as it was moving in.

 Storm getting closer.

Some of the hail that fell from the storm.  This storm dumped hail for about 15 minutes.

Closer view of the hail.

June 20th, 2011 Chase

Tornadoes: 0
Hail: Pea
Wind: 60 knots
Falling tree branches on car: 1

This was a very interesting chase, as we were close to seeing a tornado, but could not find it. Our target for the day was Norfolk, NE.  We left early that morning and got down to near Norfolk. We kept an eye on the radar for a while and before we knew it, there were storms firing to our southwest, one of them which spawned multiple tornadoes on the Nebraska-Kansas border.  We drove after the storms and after a while, they started turning to more HP supercells and became more mushy (what a surprise).  We then ended up on one cell that we thought may produce, but she did not.  After we gave up on that one, another small storm developed to our south but that one quickly weakened.  Even though we did not see any tornadoes, we saw some very frequent lightning, a tree branch fell on our car, and we even got some small hail.  In addition, the sky looked like sorbet :)

© Heather Caye 2011

 The sorbet-colored sky :)

 There was some slight rotation with these clouds but nothing happened.

 This was the storm to our south as it was developing.

 One of the lightning strikes that I captured.

 This was an interesting stroke.

 Awesome CG lightning stroke.

 I wonder what it hit?

This is totally awesome.

June 16, 2011 Chase

Tornadoes: 0
Hail: Marble
Wind: 60 knots

This was a local chase for us since we were only a few hours away from home.  Around noon, we drove south to Scottsbluff, NE and ran into a nice severe thunderstorm. Unfortunately, my camera was in the trunk and so I did not get any good pictures. However, I did get some cool video. We saw a cloud lowering but no tornado. We just saw some dust blowing, hail, and a LOT of rain.

© Heather Caye 2011

June 12, 2011 Chase

Tornadoes: 0
Hail: None
Wind: 50-60 knots

I met up with my friend and chase partner Dan D'Amico and we, along with his roommate Evan, headed north. This was initially a local chase but we ended up going to about 29 miles south of Buffalo, SD.  There was a storm in Montana and it was the only tornado-warned storm.  I named her "Mamma" since she was the dominant storm of the bunch.  When we got into position, we could feel the inflow going into the storm.  As time passed, a shelf cloud approached us.  We knew that at the very least, we were going to get hit with some good wind.  In the distance, we thought we saw a wall cloud, but were unsure.  When the shelf cloud passed us, it started to rain so we all stopped taking pictures and videos and got in Dan's car.  The straight line winds then hit us hard and the car started rocking back and forth a little.  She may have not produced when we got to her, but she was still an incredible storm.  I also got some amazing photos that are some of my best to date.

© Heather Caye 2011

Wall cloud in the distance.

Shelf cloud.

Shelf and wall clouds.

Shelf cloud getting closer.

Cloud-to-ground lighting and shelf.

Shelf cloud

Sunset

Back in Rapid City, with the sun reflecting off the clouds.

Storm east of Rapid City

Moon with the storm.

June 11, 2011 Chase

Tornadoes: 0
Hail: None

Well, not a lot happened on this chase. We met up at noon and drove down to Chadron, NE.  We waited there for a while but nothing was going on. We then drove to Alliance, NE and then eventually made our way back to Chadron after we saw a decent storm on radar.  However, this storm did not do anything.  We then drove north into South Dakota and entered the Allen area, which is the poorest area in the country (and I thought that Detroit was ghetto and spooky enough).  We then decided that the chase was over since everything turned into a big linear mess (again) and headed home.

On our way back to Rapid City, however, there was a nice storm coming in.  I was able to get some lightning on video as well as a few shots once I got back home (but only the photos are included in this blog due to technical difficulties).

© Heather Caye

Storm in the distance near Scottsbluff, NE.

Storm in Chadron, NE.

Mammatus clouds in Chadron, NE area.

I thought this looked cool.

Beautiful sun as we were heading home.

Storm in the distance.

Back home in Rapid City.

May 30th, 2011 Chase: My First Tornado

It seems as though our team is getting better each time that we chase because today, for the first time this season, we scored our first tornado.

May 30th was a very cool 53 degrees in Rapid City. We left about 9:30 a.m. (we had to stop at AT&T before we got on the road, though).  We headed east on I-90 and before we knew it, the temperature rose more than 30 degrees. We reached Mitchell, SD at about 4 p.m. CDT. By this time, there was already development in northern Nebraska and a tornado watch was issued for northern Nebraska and the eastern half of South Dakota. We decided since we were having such an amazing time with our internet connection to stay in Mitchell and let the action come to us.  These storms were tornado-warned at the time, so we were excited. However, we were also nervous because these storms were moving 40 knots or faster and were also afraid of these storms becoming linear fast.  After waiting for a while, we saw another storm to the north that could produce so we went after that.  The structure looked amazing, but did not produce a tornado.  We then decided to go after the other one.  With our internet connection being a pain, it was hard to find a place in these small towns that we were going through to find a wi-fi connection.  We got into the Emery/Bridgewater area and saw another storm, but this one did not produce either. Finally, we found a dirt/gravel road and went down it to get into position.  To our right (south and west) were clear of trees, buildings, etc. However, there was a line of dense trees to our left (east).  The skies grew dark very fast, the lightning was increasing in frequency, and we thought that we were in perfect position to see something. It then started raining and we decided to go back up the road to our north.  After we passed the tree line, we got a surprise: our first tornado of the season.  It all happened so fast.  I was only able to get out my video camera to get a shot, because ten seconds later, a wall of rain hit us and we could not see the tornado anymore.  We then decided to go east to get ahead of the storm so we can see the tornado.  However, we were not able to get out of the rain. The lightning and heavy rain and wind was incredible, though.  At about 8:30 p.m., with light fading away and our safety levels going downhill, we headed back to Rapid City.

Seeing my first tornado was very exciting.  I was hoping that the experience would last a little longer, though. Hopefully next time, we will see an even stronger tornado and it will last a lot longer as well.

First cell of the day.  She was tornado-warned but did not produce.

Another shot of the first storm.

Beautiful shelf cloud. This was seen as we were heading out of this storm and moving on to catch up to the next one.

Rain shaft with the second storm.

It looked like she was trying to form a wall cloud.

Nice lowering with the third storm, and it looked pretty spooky, too.

This was the storm that produced our tornado (fourth storm). This was the tail cloud.

Still watching and waiting, but then we decided to leave shortly after this was taken.

This is what we saw after we got past the trees (video capture).

We saw some insane lightning coming back home (video capture).

© Heather Caye 2011