July 10 Pope & Ottertail Counties Minnesota

With a cold front approaching from the northwest, a weak surface low formed near Aberdeen, SD and  moved east/northeast into west central MN where supercell thunderstorms formed in a highly unstable environment.

After letting the first Pope county cell go due to getting a late start, Melinda and I settled in on this supercell which was rapidly developing  southwest of Glenwood, MN.  I was surprised by the structure given the shear was not all that great but this area of Minnesota gets some help from the topograhy of the Buffalo and Glacial Ridge Areas so anything is possible.

The LCL's were a little high but the base of the storm was lowering as we headed west after having to deal with local gawkers who were blocking a major intersection.  At least it wasn't TIV2 for a change.

The road network in this area is really good so we had no trouble keeping in close proximity to the slow moving supercell as it really started to wrap up.

About 7 pm, a very tight curl started to develop under the meso while a second area rapidy dropped to the ground further back in the rain and hail.  Brad Winger was able to capture this video of the brief tornado from a closer vantage point in Barness Township.

Pretty nice supercell by Minnesota standards.  About  this time the surface inflow really started to increase.  Note how all of the grass is bending towards the storm.

Mel and I take a minute to add a photo to our collection of "us" pictures.

Mel getting some video.

The storm finally started to pick up some speed as we dropped south in Rolling Forks township.  The inflow was still very good and the same area of rotation persisted.  It would briefly form structures like this but they would disappear just as quickly.

As we headed east towards Swift Falls, MN, the storm tried one last time to produce a large wall cloud but it lost it's battle to contain the outflow and quickly transitioned to a linear mess.

After a quick roadside  chat with Tony Perkins we continued south to near Murdock, MN where we called the chase off and opted to head back north in hopes of doing some lightning photogrpahy on the back of anvils.

The back of the storms were very dirty with a lot of debris and ligbt rain falling so no lightning photograhy which was kind of disappointing but the slow moving supercell more than made up for it.

Chasing is a family thing for us.  Not to be outdone, my mom  (Pat) hit the road in Ottertail county and did get on three different tornado  warned storms.

Here is the first cell passing over Fergus Falls, MN with a small wallcloud.   Her entire series of pics shows the wall cloud form, then a  funnel form, before dissipating pretty quickly.  If time and space allows, I'll try to make an animation of the sequence and post it on here.

Same wall cloud with a stubby funnel underneath which never did make contact with ground according to her.

The third cell.  (On the second one it is really hard to make out a distant pronounced lowering under the updraft base.)  This was a mean little sucker as the hail to the left of the wall cloud is 3"+.  Quite a bit of damage was reported from the hail from the Orwell Dam area over to near Pebble Lake.  This photo was taken from the CR25/I94 junction looking south.  All in all a very interesting evening for us!

2010 Chases