{"id":2195,"date":"2009-06-30T22:23:30","date_gmt":"2009-07-01T06:23:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/?p=2195"},"modified":"2009-11-20T01:47:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-20T09:47:00","slug":"june-30-2009-carlyle-mt-tornadic-supercell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/2009\/06\/30\/june-30-2009-carlyle-mt-tornadic-supercell\/","title":{"rendered":"June 30, 2009 Carlyle, MT, Tornadic Supercell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"09jun30_carlyle_mt_petitt\"<\/a>A big\u00a0 day in Montana, and my first Montana tornado!<\/strong> We went north from Baker, MT, about 18 miles, and came upon a developing supercell with magnificent structure,\u00a0 Near the leading edge of the updraft base, a large funnel materialized inside of an area of precip to our NNW.\u00a0 A tornado touched down and persisted for a couple of minutes before being totally hidden by precip.\u00a0 The cell moved ESE and chased us down an unpaved road to Carlyle.\u00a0 On the way, a large lowering\/wall cloud threatened to touch down, but apparently did not.\u00a0 We scooted south to Ollie and found a barn to hide in as the core moved over the tiny town.\u00a0 Nickel-size hail fell.\u00a0 At sunset we found a high spot near Marmarth, ND, to shoot an amazingly brilliant sky with plenty of mammatus—–many many more pics to come, eventually!\u00a0 I got good tripoded video of the supercell and tornado, and some wide-angle shots of the supercell with the tornado in the rain-wrap.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Rob Petitt for sharing his zoomed image of the “Carlyle” tornado (above).\u00a0 The tornado was perhaps 6 to 8 miles WNW of the little town (just west of Hwy 7) at the time—6:10 p.m. MDT.\u00a0 We reported the event to NWS Glasgow about 90 minutes after the event, when we had a cell signal in Baker.<\/p>\n

——<\/p>\n

Updated longer version, with pictures!<\/p>\n

My forecast for this chase day, written around noon MDT:<\/p>\n

The target area is the Beach\/Baker\/Bowman\/Belfield quadrilateral.\u00a0 Initiation will likely be in MT, closer to Glendive.\u00a0 A supercell would presumably dive southeastward into the southeasterly surface winds, which are progged to be blowing at 15-20 kts.\u00a0 This will be below a westerly 500 flow at 30-35 knots.\u00a0 The sore spot today is so-so moisture, with dew points generally near 60F.\u00a0 I suspect that the storm bases will be somewhat high, with only a very slight chance of a tornado.<\/em><\/p>\n

As indicated above, I liked the area along the western ND border with MT, from about Baker to Beach.\u00a0 This worked out perfectly, as storms went up near Glendive and became tornado-warned (funnel cloud sightings and Doppler-indicated).\u00a0 The problem was that we were still motoring north through NW SD and SW ND (more than an hour away), when the “Hodges, MT” storm was providing all of this fun.\u00a0 We had stopped at Mount Rushmore briefly after leaving Chadron about 11 a.m.\u00a0 We pressed northward on U.S. 83, and from Bowman we went west to Baker.\u00a0 After a quick pit stop, we blasted north on 7, and were greeted by a brand new and impressively structured supercell.\u00a0 We stopped 18 miles north of Baker and set up, and not three minutes later, a skinny tornado was spawned beneath a large wall cloud which was somewhat obscured by precip.\u00a0 This tornadic cell was south of the originally tornado-warned storm, now near Wibaux.\u00a0 And, it was about as far from any Doppler radar as any place on the Plains.\u00a0 I tried to phone it in to NWS Glasgow, but had no cell service! (We reported the event later from Baker.)<\/p>\n

The four images below were taken along Route 7, north of Baker, near the Wibaux\/Fallon County line.\u00a0 The view is to the north-northwest, and time was about 6:08 to 6:10 p.m. MDT.\u00a0 The area of precipitation beneath the eastern\/forward portion of the storm base partially obscures the wall cloud and its developing funnel\/tornado.<\/p>\n

\"090630_8669_carlyle_mt\"<\/a>\"090630_8670_carlyle_mt\"<\/a>\"090630_8672_carlyle_mt\"<\/a>\"090630_8675_carlyle_mt\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Shortly after observing the tornado and watching it get more and more obscured by rain, we hurried north a couple of miles to get a closer look.\u00a0 I stopped at Carlyle Road, as we had a good look at the storm (still to our north-northwest), and a decent unpaved road to the east (to Carlyle).\u00a0 The nine images below were taken from 6:16 to 6:26 p.m. MDT.\u00a0 The tornadic area remained completely obscured.\u00a0 (Or almost<\/em> completely obscured!\u00a0 The first and second images below faintly show what might be a tornado, buried in the precipitation core.)\u00a0 I estimate that the tornado which we observed from the previous stop occurred about three or four miles northwest of the intersection of Route 7 and Carlyle Rd. \u00a0 The images below show a new, quickly-forming appendage on the leading edge of the updraft base.\u00a0 A tail cloud materialized, and the photos suggest another interesting “lowering” could have been associated with a second tornado.\u00a0 We were unable to confirm or rule out another tornado, as the area was again quickly involved with precip.<\/p>\n

\"090630_8677_carlyle_mt\"<\/a>\"090630_8681_carlyle_mt\"<\/a>\"090630_8682_carlyle_mt\"<\/a>\"090630_8686_carlyle_mt\"<\/a>\"090630_8687_carlyle_mt\"<\/a>\"090630_8688_carlyle_mt\"<\/a>\"090630_8689_carlyle_mt\"<\/a>\"090630_8691_carlyle_mt\"<\/a>\"090630_8695_carlyle_mt\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Most of the above images are true 16mm wide-angle shots, in order to show as much storm structure as possible.\u00a0 The supercell was very close and moving southeastward, right at us.\u00a0 We blasted east on Carlyle Road, and stopped for a couple of minutes to watch the pronounced lowering to the north.\u00a0 It looked like it meant business (first image below), but overall rotation was not impressive.\u00a0 With the cell breathing down our necks, I thought that we were in a bad spot as the road network ran out to the east.\u00a0 Seven miles east of Route 7, we turned south off of Carlyle Road and headed to Ollie.\u00a0 Again, this was an excellent gravel road, but I wasn’t looking forward to getting cored in this area. \u00a0 We made it to Ollie after five miles, just as nickel hail began to fall.\u00a0 Were baseball-sized hailstones seconds away?!\u00a0 I saw a rancher drive his pick-up truck into his ranch driveway, and I had Rob follow him.\u00a0 The nice fellow pointed us into his barn!\u00a0 We were safe!\u00a0 The storm seemed to lose steam for some reason, and we were treated to only marble-sized hail for the most part from Kirk Stark’s barn.\u00a0 Mr. Stark came over to chat with us as we waited out the core.<\/p>\n

The only way back to pavement was west from Ollie to Hwy 7, so getting back in position on the storm was not going to happen.\u00a0 After dropping back south to Baker, we tried to continue south but were thwarted by very muddy conditions.\u00a0 Instead, we headed east to the Dakota Lodge in Lemmon for the night, with a photo stop at sunset just west of Marmarth.<\/p>\n

\"090630_8698_carlyle_mt\"<\/a>\"090630_8705_carlyle_mt\"<\/a>\"090630_8708_marmarth_nd\"<\/a>\"090630_8710_marmarth_nd\"<\/a>\"090630_8714_marmarth_nd\"<\/a>\"090630_8716_marmarth_nd\"<\/a>\"090630_8725_marmarth_nd\"<\/a>\"090630_8738_marmarth_nd\"<\/a>\"090630_8744_marmarth_nd\"<\/a>\"090630_8747_marmarth_nd\"<\/a>\"090630_8758_marmarth_nd\"<\/a>\"090630_8774_bowman_nd\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A big\u00a0 day in Montana, and my first Montana tornado! We went north from Baker, MT, about 18 miles, and came upon a developing supercell… [Read More]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30,15,11,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-30","7":"category-sunsets-and-storms","8":"category-supercells","9":"category-tornadoes","10":"entry","11":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2195"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2198,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195\/revisions\/2198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}