An All-American storm chase dayPosted May20, 2007 at 11:35 PMSunday was the best day of our storm chase trip so far, as we succeeded in catching a supercell thunderstorm as it blew off the Black Hills over Rapid City, South Dakota. We targeted western South Dakota and southeast Montana as the area most likely to have significant severe weather despite limitations in moisture and deep atmospheric shear, or changing winds with height. But as we approached Rapid City, this storm (click here for larger version of photo) was already firing, and somewhere it was finding enough spin in the atmosphere to become a supercell. What we saw was a textbook look at a "low precipitation supercell," or "LP" as it's known in weather geek talk. It produced little rain but spit out quite a bit of hail in the Rapid City area, and a few larger stones dinged our vans as we headed southward to observe the storm. For a time, the storm produced a rotating lowering known as a wall cloud (click here for video still frame), which in some situations can be a precursor to a tornado. In this case, though, there wasn't enough low-level spin and the cloud base was too high for a tornado ... a very good thing for Rapid City! 
A supercell thunderstorm dominates the sky over Rapid City, South Dakota In between ... we found we were only 15 miles away from a great American landmark, so the chase vans pulled in for an afternoon stop at Mount Rushmore. Here I am below the presidential quartet set in stone. It's hard to beat a day like this, but the severe weather outlook continues to look more active for the next 3 or 4 days. So the best may be yet to come.
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About this blog
Kevin Myatt works on the copy desk for The Roanoke Times and is its principal weather geek, writing a weekly weather column and advising the newsroom on weather topics. He helps guide students on a storm chasing trip to the central U.S. each May and was an editor for "Hurricanes and the Middle Atlantic States." .....Advertisement.....
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