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RE: Summer Thunderstorms on the Great Plains
You got a couple of great photos there. You ever had any close calls out there chasing storms?
You got a couple of great photos there. You ever had any close calls out there chasing storms?
Thanks!
May 2nd, the day after the above story, was another high probability day in my home area. I went out by myself this time. I was a little late, sadly, and missed a GORGEOUS wall cloud which my cousin snapped. Here's his low-quality cell phone snap:
So I was out wandering around, out of sorts and out of position. I decided to try to sneak to the east of the line of storms to get free of the mist and sprinkles that were obscuring my views. The most direct route just clipped the edge of the core. In storm chasing terms, going through the core is called "core punching" and is frowned upon unless there's good reason. Often the storm core contains high winds and hail and that's also the highest probability area for a tornado to set down. This storm was not tornado warned, so there was little danger of that. However, it was a huge hail storm; see this photo taken by my neighbor of the hail from that storm:
I saw on radar that I was going to pass through the very edge of the storm's core going the most direct route east (to go east I had to first go north to Hwy. 50), but going east any other way would have had me going a long way around and would have put me further south than I wanted. So I went north into the edge of the storm core. In the ten minutes it took to go north, the storm had moved considerably east, so I was in the middle of the storm core rather than the edge. I could not see more than a few feet it was raining so hard. I got a little hail, but not much. The primary hazards were the sheets of rain and the strong winds. Then I got stuck behind a semi going east (and it was not even close to safe to pass) which kept me moving with the storm (and only slowly gaining on it) right in its core with the additional spray of the truck in front of me.
I finally got ahead of the storm and had some enjoyable experiences out of the storm core, though it wasn't very photogenic. However, now the storm core was between myself and home. I was happy that I would be moving against the storm this time and my core punch would take far less time. I drove back west through the storm core and as I drove along, an absolutely enormous gust of wind came along and I may have been hydroplaning to boot (I'm not 100% sure), but I had to turn my wheel at a 75 degree angle to the right to keep from getting pushed over yellow line into oncoming traffic. Even with my wheel turned at that angle, I was slowly and inexorably sliding toward the center of the road. Suddenly I was through the gust of wind and I jerked the wheel back to 10 degrees to the right in order to not swerve into the ditch.
I know that's quite mild compared to what most storm chasers have experienced, but it scared me enough I pulled off and waited for the storm to finish passing me with me stationary.
Sounds pretty intense to me.
We don't get weather like that very often here. Too many mountains. But we do occasionally get micro-bursts which can be kinda scary. Last year half the city had no power for a week due to one. Those are fairly rare though. Or at least our state (Montana) is big enough that most the places they probably happen are more or less uninhabited.
That is some monster hail there. Hate to get smacked in the noggin' by one of those.