The Badlands
Lunch
Wall Drug--visited for about 10 minutes
Sturgis
Sturgis hill climb
Supercells in eastern Wyoming.
Is it a funnel?
High Based Supercell
Hail
1/4“ Hail
Panorama >>>
<<<Panorama
Panorama>>>
THe white area beneath the cumulus cloud is the hail core
Two supercells about 10 miles apart
Mushroom cloud supercell
A large cell starts up heading for Sturgis (not visible), so we hit the road to chase it.
Storm starting to collapse (note lowering in the top)
Coming into Sturgis
WIndows blown out
Roger shooting for the Weather Channel
Another rear window gone
Backup coming into Sturgis from the East
Trying to catch the storm as it left Sturgis, our first glimpse from behind and to its left.
Can see the bell shape of the rotating updraft.
Starting to catch it.
Lots of intake into the storm
The storm started eating its own (cold) downdraft, and we thought it might die.
Finally we got past it, but the roads wouldn't let us get out in front.
Down to 1/4 tank so had to get gas quickly in Wall before heading north, but the storm didn't stop and we were losing time going north.
The storm pulsed back up. Rain /Hail core(downdraft) on left, updraft on right. Inflow to right. We're still trying to catch up to it.
Rainbow supercell, stil trying to catch it.
Rapidly forming scud clouds under main updraft in the storm.
Lots of wind!
Still trying to catch it, the light fading. The storm was reportedly going about 50 miles/hour.
Lowering caused by rear flank downdraft from the storm.
We're losing it due to the road network
FInally, we got mostly in front of the storm. In flow from the left, spinning up into the storm. Top was 40-50 thousand feet tall.
The inflow
Hail core approaching, past sunset
Due to the lack of roads, we couldn't get away from the storm. Now we're punching the core again, and the hail and extremely high winds are coming from the right of the van. I moved into the left hand back seat in case the right windows blew out.
Finally clear of the hail.
It's a dent the size of a softball!
Looking back at the storm, still going.
Still strong rotation indicated by the horizontal bands
Here it comes! (Better video to come)
The morning after
