F5Chaser

We ended up chasing the supercell that developed near Sauk Centre and followed it southeast to near Richmond before deciding to give up on it and head up I-94, closer to the triple point and on the warm front. Kind if wish we would have stayed with that cell all the way down to the Metro since it was so photogenic! There ended up being just too many storms that went up at once out in western MN and we ended up trying to stay ahead of a rather nice shelf all the way back to the Twin Cities. Sort of a dissapointing day overall but glad we were able to initially see that supercell up by Melrose. Here's a few pics:

So did anyone see a tornado, or have there been any confirmed tornadoes on Saturday? Just curious, because with all the pictures floating around from that day, I still haven't seen one.

Jeremy DenHartog wrote:
JohnW wrote:
I'm starting to think that many spotters and "chasers" (using that term REALLY loosely) were actually calling the updraft base on this thing a wall cloud... They just weren't used to that kind of storm up here. Because of the two big tiers to the storm, I bet the bottom tier was the 'wall cloud' to many people...

At the expense of making myself sound like an idiot, was that bottom tier (like in the first picture I posted) not a wall cloud then and just an updraft base? I never saw any rotation on the storm visually but on radar it showed the signs (had a hook, showed some rotation, etc)...and just to be clear we never made any reports as the 'shelf cloud' appearance at times was throwing me off and had me questioning if it was in fact a wall cloud or not (and I learned that lesson the hard way - only make reports that you are 100% certain of). Sorry for maybe the dumb question - just trying to learn. Also, if it isn't a wall cloud, how could you tell (I mean this question with the utmost respect - again just trying to learn)? Thanks in advance for any help as I am a bit confused about this one...

No, I don't see a wall cloud in the pictures. Sorry if I confused you, just meant it definitely wasn't a shelf cloud. To further confuse you, wall clouds usually smaller, further under the meso, and usually have considerable upward motion on the side facing the rain. The leading edge of a meso, and also shelf clouds also have upward motion, but usually in the form of scud rising up into it, not upward motion continuing up the side of the cloud.

Personally, I call the entire bottom part of the storm an updraft area/base, storm base or action area. The edge of the storm base surrounding the base would be the collar, and the corkscrew up the side of the storm, I call the meso, or rotating updraft. If the clouds above the base are more cauliflower looking, I just call it an updraft.

On the subject of HP storms, personally, I consider them HP if they have rain in or surrounding the updraft. I'm not sure of the definition though, so I could be wrong. I don't think it has anything to do with having a shelf, though maybe rain cutting of the inflow in the rear would force the storm to obtain inflow from the front forming a shelf? I dunno...

What an active this Saturday turned out to be. I left the cities around 11 AM and met up with Shawn and Joel at the Big Lake McDonald's off 94. After lunch we headed past the storm of the day, around 12:30 - 1:00 PM or so I'd guess. We both stopped after it went tornado warned near Alexandria and watched it for a little bit. It didn't look very organized, it was north of 94 and heading east into tree and lakeland, and there was a main show to come in good chase territory out west. Joel and Shawn left fairly quickly, but I stuck around for another 10 minutes or so before heading west myself. I didn't see another MN chaser for the rest of the day. As we know, that cell went SE instead and produced a photogenic updraft far better than what the western cells offered.

I got about 40 or so miles into ND to meet the advancing cells when new cells went up all around me. I was torn between going west after the established ones, or hanging with the front ones that had a chance of becoming dominant. Well I stayed in the front, and they didn't do anything special, and the rear ones never got better. At that point I headed for the southern cells, and eventually ended up in Worthington. I saw some insane lightning there that had me a little concerned about getting hit. All in all, it was about a 700 mile trip, and it finally burned me out.

Below is a combined video from July 10 and this day's lightning, July 17.

Kyle.Schanus wrote:
first pic was right over sauk centre pretty much and the 2nd one was southeast of sauk centre about 5 miles

Hi Kyle...
Welcome to F5! Nice chase. How about the other pictures - where were they from?

Todd

Hey Todd
Thanks!
The 3rd picture wasn't too far from the 2nd picture, probably a couple more miles southeast.
The 4th picture was a little later in the storms life cycle towards the town of Watkins and the last picture was near Watertown mn.

Thanks, Kyle. Happy chasing...
Todd