The previous day was active up north near Topeka, KS, and we stayed the night near Wichita.  The target area today was the Red River area, near Lawton and Wichita Falls.  The cap was strong and the chances for daytime storms along a SW-NE boundary from about Vernon to Oklahoma City were so-so.  Computer models indicated a big cell before sunset way down south, around Clairemont, TX.  But, dew points in that region were in the upper 40s, compared to the mid 60s near the Red River.  Models were certain about convection and even supercells somewhere near the boundary in SW OK…but were waffling as to whether storms would initiate before dark or not.

We drifted south to Wichita Falls and even a little south of there, even though a surface circulation and moisture convergence bullseye suggested that convection was more likely up towards Lawton.  I thought about blasting southwest to the Clairemont area (Kent County, TX) around 4 p.m., but resisted and decided to give our original target area a chance.  By 6 or 7 p.m., our area had little more than a struggling cumulus field, and that big and bad storm did indeed form in the middle of the wasteland between Abilene and Lubbock —- near Clairemont.  Shucks.

We rolled into Vernon at 8 p.m. and got a quick bite at McDonalds.  I reserved rooms in town, and then decided to blast SSW to the beast, now tornado warned!  It was 100 miles away, but I thought that we should be able to at least get a decent light show if we drove for an hour or so.  As we neared Benjamin, we were treated to some distant CGs out of the big storm’s anvil, and some nearby CGs due to new small cells.  After clearing these small cells and the rain south of Benjamin, we stopped and set up the tripods and had a little luck with some lightning crawlers.

The sunset pics were just south of Vernon.

We hung out near Newton, and then Marion, for much of the early-to-mid afternoon.  We waited and waited for something to get strong and that wasn’t going to immediately blast north into murk north of I-70.  It looked like another case of ill-timed upper-level support, as the early morning upwards motions were now replaced by subsiding air.  The storms that did go up on the boundary to our west and southwest were not impressive.  And, a perusal of the SPC mesoscale page showed that any storm that did go up would not have much time to improve in quality air.  Hmmmph.

Finally, around 5 p.m. we committed to a couple of developing storms coming towards Marion and Strong City from the El Dorado area.  One was a bit east of 177, and the other one a tad west of 177.  These had relatively decent rain-free bases and were fed by nice and strong easterly inflow.  Organization seemed strange, though, and I had problems figuring out just what the heck was happening.  South of Council Grove, we observed a funnel cloud with the west cell (some five miles distant).  It persisted for a couple of minutes and quit. We lost sight of this base as we maneuvered through Council Grove and continued north on 177.  When we emerged out of the trees and river-bottom areas a few miles north of town, the base to our east several miles looked promising.  But, lo and behold, nice low-level circulation was quickly developing VERY near to our east.  A funnel developed, came halfway down, and a tight ground rotation was observed in the trees beneath it for about 30 seconds.  It dissipated somewhat quickly.  Our location was about halfway between Alta Vista and Council Grove, and I put the tornado at 6:00 p.m., maybe a mile-and-a-half east of 177.

We tried to keep up thereafter and slowly fell behind.  We found ourselves at Burlingame in time to watch a different storm get tornado-warned and scream off towards Topeka. It showed an “area of interest” on its back end, and some dangly stuff was teasing the ground, but rotation was non-evident.

There was little to nothing worth pursuing 45 minutes prior to sunset, and we headed to Emporia for dinner.  We were a bit lucky to be so close to one of the few tornadoes that did occur in Kansas today.  Given the expectations, the chase was a bit underwhelming and disappointing.

A youtube clip of the Council Grove tornado is here.

The first two images below were taken south of Council Grove along 177.  The third one (6344) was about a minute after the tornado dissipated, looking east from 177.

Photographer Kelly Delay was with our group, and he managed an excellent shot of the tornado.  Kelly’s images from the tour can be found on his Clouds 365 page, his Facebook page, twitter, Kellydelay.com, etc.

I worked a rather rare midweek afternoon shift at Van Nuys AP, and brought my camera with me. It was a bright and beautiful day with N to NW winds, great visibility, plus a few ACSL around. Don’t tell me that you don’t know that “ACSL” stands for “altocumulus standing lenticular” clouds. These wave clouds were courtesy of fast flow aloft over the Transverse Ranges of Southern California (northwest to northeast of Los Angeles). After a few obligatory airplane pics during the late afternoon, my camera lenses were turned towards the ACSL sunset. Enjoy!

I got rooms in Pierre, and on the way south a cluster of very strong storms matured west and north of PIR. We managed to squeeze ourselves in between several of these very electrified storms, and we had an amazing 4th of July thunder and lightning show! Lightning in these nearly stationary storms was practically continuous. At, Pierre, around midnight, Sioux Avenue had about a foot of water on it, and we had to find an alternate path to get to the Super 8!

The images above show the towering cumulus clouds southwest of Mobridge during the late afternoon.  (This was near Trail City and Promise.  Promise is a barely-there place along BIA 7 between Trail City and La Plant.  I think it is named after the yummy buttery spread.)  It was quite miserable in the sun, with a temperature near 90F and dew point of 77F!  We drove back and forth on the road for a time to try to stay in the shade of the clouds.  We were right on the front, too, and had little or no breeze.  What do you make of this line-up of hitchhikers?

We were somewhat despondent when nothing matured in our cu field near Promise, and we took the dirt road BIA 7 south to La Plant (in case a strong storm went up farther west on 212).  I took the first two images of the four above at 6:56 p.m. MDT (0056Z), from La Plant.  The cell was — you guessed it — practically right over Promise, SD.  A little more than 40 minutes later we were just southeast of the storm, along BIA 7.  Though we heard a pronounced hail roar, I think that the storm was already weakening at this point.  In the first image of the supercell (3741), a second strong updraft can be seen on the extreme right.  It is along the front and about 50 miles ENE of our nearby storm.

The lightning pics from Route 1804 about 15 NNW of Pierre are below.  I got a little artsy with the colorful sunset shot by jacking up the foreground brightness (the same image without the drastic photoshopping is also provided) —- it looks unnatural, of course, but I thought it was worth sharing.

Today offers good upslope chase prospects from about Weld County to Lusk and into se MT and nw SD. The question is WHERE exactly along this axis?? I wish I knew. We are headed west along I-90 towards the Black Hills. There are plenty of pros and cons favoring the south, middle, and north plays today.

After a look at the 12Z NAM, I liked the area from about Lusk to Crawford in the nw NE PH (the middle option). It shows a little wave at 500mb moving through that area. 500 winds are west at about 35 knots, above moist southeasterly surface winds. It isn’t difficult to image a nicely sculpted supercell moving southeast through this area around 00Z.

I checked the HRRR, and its 13Z run has a nice big blob down by CYS, moving slowly south into Weld County. This certainly could be a beast, perhaps tornadic. The HRRR kept this thing going while diminishing the cells in western SD and around the Black Hills, which seemed weird. This southern target is somewhat out of reach and is south of the 588 line at 500 mb), which scares me a bit. I would prefer to be on a storm north of that line! However, the latest RUC shows the highest forecast CAPE values around here, over 4000.

The 15Z RUC paints a very nice picture for extreme se MT and nw SD from 00Z to 03Z. Instability would appear to be excellent, and surface winds are forecast to be nicely backed as the RUC has a minor surface trough/lobe extending northeastward towards ne WY/se MT. 500 flow and 700 flow look just as good here as the NE PH vicinity, too. Some junky debris cloudiness in that area, though, will have to move out in order to make me giddy. This area is north of the hot air and that 588 line—yeah!

We will continue to RAP, and I’ll have to decide which side of the Black Hills to camp out on. At this point in time, I am favoring Harding County and vicinity in extreme nw SD.

After lunch in Wall, we continued west, and were lured into ne WY as storms were getting strong.  One very strong cell appeared to be a “left-mover”, as it was quickly moving north into Crook County.  I decided to try to intercept it along I-90.  This storm was moving north so quickly that we barely got to it by the time it reached I-90, and at that time it was crashing into another strong storm just north of the Interstate.  As this “merger” transpired, the low-level organization seemed to strengthen and a tornado warning was issued.  Lightning activity picked up suddenly, and we had some very suspicious lowerings just to our northwest.  Unfortunately, we were stopped along I-90 at a mediocre viewing spot, without a good view beneath the storm base.  We had no place to turn around, and had just exited a construction zone to boot, so we were lucky that we didn’t have to continue on the one lane into the core of the left-mover!  Anyhow, it looked on one or two occasions that funnel clouds were getting close to the ground some 5 to 8 miles to our northwest, and we were unsure whether a tornado had touched down or not.  Video and some of my still images (below) show some suspicious stuff!  We were about 8 to 10 miles wsw of Sundance.  SPC storm reports shows a 1.50-inch hail report ten miles west of Sundance, and no tornado reports.

This activity weakened some and was moving north into a poor road network, so we set our sights on a new supercell just east of Upton, some 25 miles to our south-southwest.  We headed south from Sundance on 585, thinking that the storm would move east or northeast.  While still 15 miles or so from the storm, we observed a pronounced wall cloud and funnel cloud with the storm base, and a spotter near the storm reported as much.  We tried to get closer after stopping for a few minutes, but the road tracked sse into a hilly area and we were unable to see what was going on to our southwest for a while.  Worse yet, the storm was moving little, and then sputtered and died once we found a hilltop to its east.  I really do not like chasing around the Black Hills.  Here is a shot of the Upton storm base to our south, a little bit after it looked its best:

With plenty of daylight remaining, we sprinted east toward some new stuff near and east of Rapid City.  This looked good briefly, but never got its act together.  We stopped near New Underwood to watch the storm move from our north to northeast, and then went into photo mode as the light and colors on the back of the storm were insane!

Finally, a brilliant shot of me, a lonely figure down the road with my tripods, and the double rainbow, CG, and awesome sunset colors, courtesy of Tempest Tours guest Paul Methot!