MajorLeagueStorms.com – Storm Chasing & Weather Blog

Here are some of the lightning shots I got from 8-22-11 by Mankato, MN.

Here is an image of the tornado we saw (from a distance) west of Morris, MN on July 30, 2011.

Ended up targeting Huron, SD for our chase as it was right on Highway 14 (which made it easy to get to) and I felt it would be fairly close to where the low/warm front would be and where initation would occur. As it turns out, our positioning was fairly good. Unfortunately aside from the northern most storms most of the storms went linear fairly quickly with embedded supercells. We still managed to see several wall clouds and at least 2 separate funnel clouds. Despite our reports though no tornado warning was issued for our storm (oh well I guess – probably partly because the storm had a shelf cloud on it but at times things would transition to a wall cloud). Anyhow, pretty fun chase and some pretty cool storm structure.

Here are the pics of the funnel clouds we saw:

We started out the day heading west on Highway 14 with a target of Pipestone, MN. Everything came together as our target and timing was almost perfect. As we headed south off of 14 towards Ruthton, MN a large and very powerful storm moved towards us with an amazing shelf cloud and storm structure. Just south of Ruthton the storm impacted us with 80+MPH winds and some small hail (there was larger hail but tried to stay out of the core). Unfortunately this storm did some significant damage in the area. Below is a picture of the shelf cloud. I will be posting video from the day in the coming days.

We ended up running late to the show so we almost missed out. We started in/near Yankton, SD as I thought this would be a good place to move across the Missouri River and knew the storms would be heading more north then anything. As it turns out, this target was just to far north. We shot south as fast as we could and ended up getting a tornado southwest of Columbus, Nebraska. It was only on the ground for a few minutes though before it lifted and the storm started to transition into more of a wind producing storm.

Based on the last few runs of the NAM it appears there is a chance of severe weather in the southern half if Minnesota into Wisconsin tomorrow, June 6. Below are several maps showing how there is plenty of CAPE, little or no CINH, plenty of EHI, 700mb temps of 10c or less, etc. There is also a sufficient amount of helicity and shear currently depicted. However, while there should be plenty of speed shear with this setup the directional shear may be a bit lacking for supercells/tornadoes when looking at whats being depicted in hodographs for the area. Something to keep an eye on.

Right now we plan to chase somewhere in the Mankato area as it appears to be the area (based on the 12z NAM) where things really come together. Even the directional shear is slightly better in this area. We will see what the morning short range models look like though. The NAM right now breaks out no precip in the area. Something I’m not extremely concerned with at this point but I fear there may be some capping issues at the 850mb level.

Like several other chasers, we ended up targeting the ‘bulge’ area in far western MN due to it being near the triple point and seemed to be the most favorable area for tornadoes as everything south seemed it would go linear fairly quickly. The morning models added some doubt to our target area but we decided it was still worth a shot. However, after hanging out in the area for several hours it became apparent that the cap was going to simply be to strong (700mb temps of ~14 in the area). We decided to head south on I-29 towards the Watertown, SD and Brookings, SD area to get on some fast moving storms coming up out of Nebraska. We ended up intercepting a couple storms just as they were starting to go linear. We probably saw a wall cloud, few shelf clouds and a gustnado – it was starting to get dark out though so things were a little more difficult to make out then they would normally be. Oh well, still a fun chase!

We initially started out near Litchfield, MN. As storms started to fire in the area we followed one as it crossed I-94 but it was evident this storm was having some capping issues. Eventually it started to look like it was breaking the cap and was dropping some .75 to 1 inch diameter hail in our area (the pic below you can see a piece of .75 inch hail but there was some bigger ones I just didn’t get pics of for some reason). That storm didn’t last long and we headed south to catch the storm near St Cloud which also had broken the cap and was in an area of better EHI, etc.

The storm northeast of St Cloud had a pretty nice meso and some nice structure but seemed pretty outflow dominant also (we were south of the meso and winds were blowing away from the storm and not toward it). We managed to see a brief needle funnel though with the storm a short time before it became tornado warned. All in all a fun little fairly local chase…

Here are a few images of the massive tornado in Pocahontas County Iowa of a massive wedge tornado. This tornado was reportedly 2-3 miles wide and was rated EF-3.