June 21, 2007 |  Southwest SD Supercell
All photos © Copyright 2007 Matt Ziebell

Upon finishing a mid shift early this morning, I was off for five days and amazingly the pattern during this time would support storm chasing.  I needed to drive to at least the Black Hills today for some chance of seeing decent storms.

I was disappointed to find extensive mid level clouds engulfing much of western SD by late morning, so after getting a satellite and sfc obs update I shot east on I-90 to Kadoka where better insolation was in place.  I later traveled south on HWY 73 to HWY 18 and watched an outflow boundary and sfc trough in far northern NE light up a few Cu.  This photo shows the boundary in the distance with some photogenic fragmented cirrus.

A soft Cb popped ~120mi to my south and later a much stronger Cb (later SVR near Faith) erupted north by about the same distance.  Great, I had targeted in between two zones of initiation--never a reassuring feeling!  I debated dropping into NE, but some stout Mdt Cu farther west along the Black Hills caught my eye so I shot west and hoped they'd organize.


  
I drove west to Pine Ridge, Oglala and finally Oelrichs where I eventually met up with a supercell near Hot Springs. Initially all that was visible was a flared updraft base, but as I drove north for a closer look I was presented with this better view.

 
I'm about 15 miles south of Hot Springs, SD and looking north as this supercell is drifting slowly SSE.  What's Interesting is that the sfc flow here was northeast around 5-10 knots, but checking RUC winds just aloft the flow veered sharply to the SE.

  
Inflow tail grows markedly and resembles an umbilical chord!

 

Updraft turrets looking very solid just after dropping baseball hail near Hot Springs.  This view is why I like High Plains' supercells so much!

  
About to head south on HWY 385/18 as an RFD becomes more apparent.

 
Going back south to Oelrichs I snapped this view showing some nicely arced mid level feeder bands.

  
I stopped near Oelrichs after seeing another rotating storm on radar farther west of this one.  The main supercell was still looking okay, but the radar trends kept showing diminishing core heights so I bailed and went west.

 
While heading west for the distant rotating storm I noticed this rogue horseshoe vortex all by its self!  It turns out I should have stuck with the main supercell as its core later underwent some improvement; although the road choices fell off big time near the Pine Ridge reservation, so I didn't feel all that bad.

 
  
A wider view showing the lonesome horseshoe vortex and the distant rotating storm that never did amount to much.  After some noodling around with scenic photos, I settled on a motel in Belle Fourche to recover after a grueling 30.3 hours of work followed by chasing!
 All photos © Copyright 2007 Matt Ziebell

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