Not a whole lot to report from the chase on August 25th — as it didn’t turn out to be all that spectacular in terms of supercells. A briefly interesting storm provided photogenic opportunities along the NM-CO border area south of Kim, CO. The storm was small and LP-ish, and given it’s size, it did not last long. Other attempts went up along the trough convergence, however they struggled mightily. The most sustained storm was actually east of Raton, and I had blown that area off. In retrospect, I probably should have chased that, as it tempted me several times with overshooting tops. I like chasing this whole area here because it is so scenic… and even the most innocuous looking storm can provide for nice "storm in landscape" photography. Below are a couple images from the chase:
I’m heading out to Clayton, NM to chase today. Dewpoints are very high by northeastern New Mexico standards with 63 at Clayton and 60 at Raton. The mid and upper level winds will not be all that strong, but southeast winds at the surface will allow for some marginal deep layer shear for supercells… and given the expected CAPE of 2500-3000 J/kg, a photogenic storm may materialize… It’s enough to get me out the door to chase in my favorite area: northeastern New Mexico.
After I got off work at 4pm yesterday, I decided to chase…and intercepted a fairly impressive high-based supercell between Scott City and Garden City, arriving around 5:30. This storm evolved into a larger HP supercell as it neared Garden City as other smaller storms west of Garden City were forming and congealing with the main storm. Some of the storm structure was fantastic, especially south of Garden City along Hwy 83 near the Finney-Haskell county line. I would estimate winds just to my north around the south side of the large circulation to have been 70-80 mph when I was a few miles north of Sublette. Another storm formed farther south…to the northwest of Liberal which attained nice structure. This storm was stationary right at sunset and also morphed into a big HP supercell as the northern activity was approaching. Quite a fascinating chase with excellent storm structure! Below are a few prelim photos:
Early morning at like 6:30am on July 11th near Ransom, KS… but there was enough ambient light to consider these "daytime" shots. The first test with the Lightning Trigger device on my Nikon D200 was a very successful one.
Both of these images were shot at 27mm, F/7.1 @ 2.5 seconds, ISO 100 with the shutter electronically triggered by the lightning flash:
I decided to chase on July 9th since a potential target for severe storms was somewhat close to my route home in either far south-central KS or northwestern OK. I targetted the area between Woodward, OK and Anthony, KS. The storms weren’t all that spectacular, but one small storm was rather photogenic near Cheyenne Valley along US Highway 412 in northern Major County along the Cimarron River (near the Gloss Mountain State Park). This particular storm did reveal decent overall rotation, but given its size, I don’t think it was severe. I was in a data network black-hole… there is no Alltel coverage (or even Sprint or Verizon for that matter) in a lot of Northwest Oklahoma…still… so I had to rely on old-school tactics (really the way it should be)… using my eyes only to make decisions on where to go next. The strongest storms of the day were near the Oklahoma City metro area, but I decided not to go down there. It was still a fun little chase… I really wanted to try out my lightning shutter trigger device on my Nikon D200 (www.lightningtrigger.com), but I saw maybe 2 cloud-to-ground lightning flashes the entire chase! Oh well
Day 9 Summary:
Nothing exciting really to report yesterday. We took another leisurely drive south through the western Black Hills… through Newcastle… eventually ending up in Lusk. There were no storms of interest to chase yesterday… just weak convection over the mountains of the Laramie Range. It was quite hazy/smokey through the drive to Lusk…especially on the southern horizon. We got to Lusk fairly early in the evening… I used this extra time for a little R&R if you will… listened to the Royals baseball game over streaming audio while watching a movie on TV (Forrest Gump was on)… completely unrelated… the Royals are on a 5-game winning streak, so that was a positive 
Vince drove over to Van Tassel which is a "town" of about 18 souls. He did some sunset time lapse stuff over some of the interesting rock formations that reside just north of Van Tassel. With a full moon, we realized this might be a nice opportunity for moonlight landscape photography with these rock formations — so we set out 20 miles east of Lusk to Van Tassel late in the evening after the sun set with the full moon rising higher in the sky. We captured some nice images a couple miles north of Van Tassel… this place reminds me of The Monument Rocks… very nice rocks/pillars sticking out of the earth which offer for interesting compositions. My 12mm ultra wide angle focal length allowed for me to get the full Big Dipper in a couple of these shots. Some notes/recommendations: Lusk is a nice, quaint little town, with a population of about 1500… comparable to the size of Greensburg, KS. The place we stayed at was small, affordable, and quite clean called the Town House Motel. If you like pizza, try "The Pizza Place" right in downtown… it’s pretty popular in town and gets busy… but the pizza is pretty darn good.
Day 10… right now:
We are on our way home. We were watching the potential for a chase opportunity up over northeast Wyoming with some northeast winds with decent moisture… but this wasn’t panning out as well as we would like, so we said to heck with it and decided to begin the 500 mile drive back. It’s incredibly hazy/smokey still as I type entering Scottsbluff County, Nebraska. Even though the past few days have been lackluster in the storm department, this trip has been quite rewarding. Now over the next week I’ll begin processing a bunch of photos for my online gallery… so look for a continued update of additional images over the rest of this summer!.
Well, today is another "slack-off" day so to speak. As I type, we are driving west on I-90 to Sundance and then we’ll take a scenic drive down towards Newcastle and eventually Lusk, WY where we plan to stay tonight. Much like yesterday, it will be another day of landscape photo opportunities with the hope of some picturesque storms coming off the Laramie Mts near Douglas or thereabouts. We are not making the full drive back today, because we want to leave options open for one last chase possibility tomorrow, Saturday, up near the Big Horn Mountains again. A weak cold front will come south and will be bringing some moisture down with it post-frontal. Northeast surface winds with moderate CAPE are forecast up against the Big Horns with adequate shear for supercells it would appear per NAM model. So we want to keep this option open. It’s either chase tomorrow… and long drive home Sunday or begin the trek back home, more leisurely, tomorrow. So that’s the latest thinking up to this point. It’s been a very fun and photographically rewarding trip for sure… but we hope to get one more good storm day in before this adventure ends
Summary:
Vince and I left Buffalo yesterday morning (6/28) and decided to drive through some of the desolate parts of Northeast Wyoming, including the towns (some ghost) of Spotted Horse, Recluse, Rocky Point, Lightning Flat, and Ridge. Through our scenic drive, we watched distant storms form over the Black Hills near Deadwood/Lead. Towards sunset, another distant storm was visible to our south which was located somewhere northeast of Douglas. We stopped at a couple of locations for some scenic landscape views/photos…images which included the Black Hills storm(s) as background. Sweet Yellow Clover has grown very thick around and east of Ridge towards Alzada…which offered some nice photo opportunities near where the old Ridge School used to be along Ridge Road. Our last photo stop of the evening was farther east along Ridge Rd. as we approached Alzada. The distant storm to our south (the one near Douglas) revealed fairly deep pink colors in the twilight sky. We drove down to Belle Fourche where we stayed the night. A couple photos follow. (I also added two photos to Day 7 summary post)
Well, Vince and I have decided that an exhaustive drive to Canada is probably not worth it. Even though the NAM model is showing mid-upper 60s dewpoints in parts of southern Alberta and Saskatchewan with excellent shear and good forcing… the observations suggest that mid-upper 60s dewpoints are unlikely… which would make the drive worthwhile for some perhaps amazing supercell storms in that shear environment. We think even with good pooling and convergence and evapotranspiration, that 60-63F dewpoints could be realized… but that’s a gamble… if the timing was different… such that my chase trip was longer, we’d probably head up there… however I have to be back to work Monday morning… so thus, we will not head up there. I guess there’s still a 10% chance we change our mind and get up very very early in the morning (we plan to stay in Belle Fourche again tonight)… but as it stands now… we may very well begin the trip back home tomorrow (Friday 29th). We’ll see. For today, some storms may form in the mid 50s dewpoint air with 2000 to 2500 J/kg CAPE, but shear is really marginal… decent southeast surface winds, but mid-upper winds of 10-15kts or so probably won’t cut it for decent organized storms. We’ll see what happens though, if something perks our interest later this evening, we’ll chase it if it’s close enough.
Summary:
We intercepted a couple marginally severe storms near the Kaycee, WY area south of Buffalo. We actually sat at a location with a good view just about one mile east of I-25 a few miles south of Buffalo for a couple hours as updraft towers percolated through the late afternoon. One such tower grew into a decent little storm updraft which showed signs of weak rotation both visually and on radar. Another storm that formed east of Thermopolis had much more mass to it and we actually thought about intercepting that one as it revealed a nice inflow notch on radar…but it didn’t last long…and we ultimately chased the smaller storm to our immediate northwest as it approached I-25. This storm went severe briefly and had a decent scalloped updraft base for awhile…but as other storms formed again to the immediate southwest…our original storm died. None of this activity was supercellular in nature, but as sunset approached, we had some very nice colors with the convective looking sky to the east including a small truncated rainbow with a little bluff in the foreground. I even got a couple CG lightning photos looking off to the distant east. Back to the northwest, another small, but pretty updraft developed over the Big Horns in the twilight sky. We sat at a location on I-25 just southeast of Kaycee for quite awhile as Vince time lapsed this interesting little storm that showed brief backsheared anvil and nice looking flanking line updrafts. We headed back to Buffalo after this storm died and our light faded.
