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

May 24, 2011 Chase

Target: Enid, OK
Tornadoes: 0
Hail: Penny

For this chase we got smart. We left Rapid City the night before at 6 p.m. and planned on spending the night in Pawnee City, NE. By 2 a.m. Central, we arrived at our destination for the night.  We left our hotel at 8 a.m. the next morning and headed south to Enid, OK, which is about 84 miles to the north of Oklahoma City. We arrived at Enid  right after initiation started and a particularly dangerous situation (PDS) tornado watch was out for the area.

We tracked three tornado-warned storms that day. The first one was in the Enid area. When we got ourselves into position, this storm looked amazing. She had already produced a few tornadoes and it looked like she was going to produce again.  However, the storms to its south decided to be mean and ran into her.  This caused her to loose rotation. She tried to reorganized herself a few times but could not get her act together. During this time, we were hearing about the Oklahoma City tornado and decided to drive south and try to catch up with it.  The second tornado-warned storm was the one associated with the Oklahoma City tornado. We did try to catch up to the storm to see this tornado. However, we were not able to. We did experience some debris falling out of the sky, so we were close.  Also, the cloud-to-ground lightning was very frequent.  We may have seen this tornado in a rain-wrapped mess but we are not sure since all we saw was rain. We got to an area just west of Tulsa, and had to pull over in a McDonald's parking lot next to a dumpster to protect us from hail.  After the storm started to pass, we went inside to grab some food before making our track back to Rapid City.  However, while watching the news, we saw a potential third storm just to our south.  After we finished, we tracked south to see if we can see a tornado. We experienced very heavy rain, some small hail, and very strong winds.  I saw a few small trees down.  However, no tornado was found.  We then decided to head to Wichita, KS for the night, and then drove back to Rapid City the next
day.

Video of our day:

Some mammatus clouds that we saw while going after our first storm of the day.

So close.....

She was still trying.

And trying...

 

Loved the structure in the distance.

 

Beautiful structure.

Coming home through Nebraska. Yes, this is a natural photo.

© Heather Caye 2011

May 20, 2011 Chase

This chase started off with us leaving at 6 a.m (I do not think we will ever do this again).  Our target area for the day was central Kansas just east of the dry line.  This day was initially a slight risk day, but was upgraded to a moderate risk day. However, we were worried because we traveled through rain from Rapid City down to our target area and were unsure about how unstable it would get. Once we crossed the Nebraska-Kansas border, storms began to fire up. Two storms just south of Osbourne, KS quickly became tornado-warned, and we decided to go after the northern one. We headed south of Osbourne to try and catch it.  This storm was looking good on radar.  Plenty of CAPE and moisture were in place and we were getting excited.  But then we lost our radar and did not know what the storm looked like.  When we finally got an update, we saw that this storm was dying out.  We then decided to head north and try to cut east so we can catch the southernmost storm.  However, we were not able to make it east fast enough and decided to wait it out.  By now, all of the storms that were developing were high precipitation supercells.  Any tornadoes that developed would be wrapped up in rain and would be nearly impossible to see until it would be too late. At about 6:30 p.m., we called it a day and drove almost 10 hours back to Rapid City.  We got in at around 3 a.m. and we plan on never doing that again.

These are all photos after we ended our chase:

The first time that we saw the sun all day long.

Under the anvil of one of the storms.  There is another storm in the distance.

Thought this looked pretty cool.

 Storm in the distance. I loved the structure. The phone line...not so much.

Beautiful sunset.

© Heather Caye 2011

First Chase EVERRRRRR!!! May 9, 2011

So this first chase of the season for us SDSMT students (first ever chase for me) was on May 9, 2011.  We decided to wait until about 2:30 in the afternoon to go out and try to find ourselves a tornado.  Our target was Phillip, SD, which is about 75 minutes east of Rapid City.

A few hours prior to leaving Rapid City, we were worried about the setup.  There was plenty of CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy), but it was capped. If the CAPE is capped, then no storms can form.  We were waiting to see if this cap would break, which was not looking good since the whole state of South Dakota was under clouds. The only way for the cap to break was if the clouds broke up and let the sun warm up the Earth. There was only about a 2% chance of a tornado occurring in SD until about 2 p.m. Then when the Storm Prediction Center came out with their new forecast, the predictability of a tornado occurring was 5%.  Also, the cloud cover in south central SD was starting to finally break up. This is when we decided to get our stuff together and head out east to Phillip, SD, which was in the bulls-eye of the 5% area.

As we headed out east, the cloud cover remained. However, as we got closer to our target area, the clouds started to break up and the temperatures started to rise from the lower 50s to the mid-70s.  Plenty of moisture was in place, the CAPE was high, and the cap was breaking. When we got to Phillip at 3:45 p.m., we were in positive thinking that we were going to see a tornado.  To keep us busy, we threw around a Frisbee, ate snacks, threw rocks, and continued to watch the radar. We kept waiting...and waiting...and waiting....but nothing was showing up on our radar.  At 6:30 p.m., with blue sky all around us, we decided to call it a day and head back home.

As we were heading back to Rapid City, we ran into a downpour. Little did we know that this "downpour" would become something more later on and make me a little upset.  When we got home around 7:45 p.m., we heard that the "downpour" that we drove through was now a severe thunderstorm.  This part of the story gets even better.  When I got home a little after 8 p.m., I looked at my radar and saw that this storm was now tornado-warned. And guess where it was heading? If you guessed Phillip, you are correct. This storm did produce a tornado and when I found that out, I was not a happy camper.  The only good that comes out of this story is that this storm developed after dark.  It is extremely dangerous to chase storms at night because you cannot see anything.  If a storm would go and produce a tornado, the only way that you will be able to see it is from lightning.  Other than that, you would be setting yourself up for trouble.

Overall, this day was a BIG bust. It was a good thing that we decided to stay local.

I was bored so I took this picture.

Saw this lonely cloud in the distance.

Okay, this is NOT what we wanted to see....

Clouds in the distance. These did not produce anything either.

When we did get home, though, we did see something.....

Oh well, better luck next time.

© Heather Caye 2011