Washing Two States

February 5, 2014 by
Filed under: Summary 

Central SD to Chadron NE
21 Jun 13

SHORT: Bypassed morning/mid-day SD MCS on its NW-W-SW side. Second MCS developed all around us in afternoon near CDR offering eccentric skies & flood.

LONG:
Recall, from the previous day’s summary, that I mentioned the unplanned adventures of storm-observing jaunts. Today was like that. We awoke in a Mobridge motel to a few itchy bites in places mosquitoes wouldn’t be able to access. We immediately suspected bedbugs, despite the lack thereof in the previous night’s customary inspections of beds and bedding. Another thorough inspection turned up none–so the mystery remains as to what got us. Whatever, it was time to get the hell out and not look back.

Laundry needed to be done anyway, given that we were in our last clean clothes. That process took longer than expected due to slow-working, money-sucking dryers; so we were stuck in MBG until that was done. This was important, as a complex of thunderstorms erupted early in the morning over the southern Black Hills (producing 4.25-inch hail!), expanding and rolling out across the Badlands area, sweeping ENE across much of central and southern SD, and treating storm observers near I-90 to a nice morning shelf-cloud display that we had to miss. All we saw, while laundry was going and while eating lunch, was the dark, amorphous gray mass of the MCS slowly shifting eastward across the southern sky.

Explosions of mid-late morning convection all over the target area seldom portend sweet supercellular tidings in the afternoon. The previous night’s thinking of a Badlands-area target would have to be revised southward, thanks to outflow from this big, unwelcome convective bomb. It was looking more and more probable that we needed to drive at least an hour or two farther SW then previously anticipated, into Nebraska. First, clean clothing and a hot meal took priority.

Lunch itself was very good–German food at a restaurant in town, just a couple of blocks from the washateria. The proprietor–a lady about my age but speaking with an odd Germanic accent, herded her own kids to and fro while serving meals and manning the register. Elke was perplexed by the accent too–not anything she was accustomed to hearing from a German or Austrian immigrant, yet decidedly of that origin. A later conversation with her revealed that she was a fourth-generation American and fully fluent in English, as had been all her ancestors in that area, but that conversational German had been passed down to her through each of four generations following 1800s immigration. That explained it–the pronunciations and cadences had been Americanized slowly over 100 years, but the words and sentences still were correct German. I wondered how she would sound to a Munich native if speaking that flavor of South Dakota German in Bavaria!

As we finished lunch, but before laundry was ready, supercells began to form ahead of the MCS, to our E and ESE and within an hour’s drive or so. This was mental torture. Yes, a quick eyeball modification of observed and forecast soundings indicated they were surface-based, as did the quick development of an intense, tornado-warned mesocyclone. These probably could have been intercepted, if not for our situation, and a tornado was reported with one of them before the cells all got absorbed into the northern fringes of what now was a raging bow echo. It wasn’t even after 1 p.m. yet! How could I get mad at missing weird midday tornado action ahead of an MCS? I didn’t.

By the time we got laundry done and packed, the supercell action was winding down, and the bowing complex had finished mowing across the PIR area and U-83 to our S. We headed down that road, through the back-side rain and lightning, admiring the oddly lit midday sky with darkness in the NE-E-SE and blue in the NW. At PIR we broke into milky skies of thin, training high clouds with slowly warming outflow and soft, stratified fuzz patches for low clouds.

Data checks showed the outflow boundary arching from about 80 miles S of us across Cherry County and into the Black Hills–still moving S but not very fast, and starting to cook in the heat of insolation on both sides. Vorticity source, vorticity source…hello! Despite the weaker-than-desired mid-up-er level winds farther S, perhaps a storm forming on or interacting with that boundary could spin up a needle-in-haystack surprise, if we caught it at the right place and time. Remember: I forecasted this.

Making the strategy work was another story altogether. It took us a few hours to zigzag our way across the reservations, through Martin SD, to Gordon NEb. By then, deep convective towers were apparent on both sides of the outflow boundary, which still was moving S about 10 mph but decelerating. The cap was weak and getting weaker, with very unusual 68-72-degree dew points along and S of the boundary. At that altitude, juice like that couldn’t be held down for long.

Moisture won–fast. In the relatively short time it took us to fuel up in Gordon, which was right on the boundary with nearly calm winds, the sky grew dark quickly, in several directions. Storms were blowing up to the NE, SE, S, and W–all at once, and acting like they wanted to merge. The most discrete, least messy area appeared to be to our W, toward CDR, which also was on the boundary. We headed that way, observing this storm rise with low, sopping-wet cloud features more suitable for Florida than northwestern Nebraska.

Somewhere back in the darkness to our E, in the messy storm mergers, a strong mesocyclone spun up on radar velocity displays, followed soon thereafter by a tornado warning and report…near Gordon, where we just had been! Determined not to get frustrated and whipsaw back after something that obviously would be transient (and turned out to be), we stayed with the convection near CDR. How could I get mad at missing weird cluster-embedded tornado action in what was becoming an MCS? I didn’t.

The sultry character of the air mass, in a place like this, was a dichotomy of two worlds–a vorticity-rich, humidity-laded gob of air that felt and smelled like a tropical depression, storms seemingly blossoming everywhere, but in a setting that hardly ever sees such conditions. I soaked in the familiar sensation from much lower latitudes–my mind singing, “5:00 somewhere”–until the outflow hit. That was that for that.

Storms were backbuilding to our WSW, just S of CDR, with outflow now past the town. Driving right by it anyway, and for good measure, we briefly stopped to secure a room for the night at our favorite motel there, the Westerner. The staff recognized me from my prior two visits this year, and was glad to get a weather report from their “expert storm-chaser guest”. Before we headed back out to get S of the backbuilding line, I told them to be ready for flooding rains, maybe some hail, but tornadoes looked unlikely in town.

By the time we got back out of town and onto the high ridge just to its S, tornadoes looked unlikely everywhere in the area. We could get back into the warm sector, but the storms were outflow-dominant, kicking big, ragged scud piles well ahead of any updrafts. There was a manifestation of the lack of more intense ambient shear. But hey…scud and outflow can be scenic, wondrous, captivating…and for several moments, these certainly were!

Uniquely arranged and oddly lit assemblies of landscape, low cloud banks and the background storm pall gave us a fine and fun time on the southern fringes of the Pine Ridge. Muted translucence from the late-day northwestern angle of the hidden sun, with deep cloud mass to the north and northeast, permitted an odd southern light to wash across the front faces of the low clouds, beneath and behind variegated slate tones aloft. That southern light reflected from the scud onto a part of the deck above, subtly illuminating it from beneath. Toss a green field foreground into the mix, and this was the fascinating result.

Gusting out as it sat nearly stationary to our N, the complex emptied its load on parts of CDR and areas uphill. Resulting torrents of flash-flood waters rolled off the southern hills and through the streets as motorists and motorcyclists casually ignored the latter-day mantra, “Turn around, don’t drown.”

The steak-and-sides dinner we had at Feiks (a recommended eatery) was bland, overcooked, overrated (by online reviewers) and overpriced, though service was attentive. We’ve had worse meals, but we likely won’t be going back there. By the time we were done, we were ready to return to the room, PING the last bits of rain, wind down for the night, recollect a long but worthwhile adventure, and imagine what the next day’s Wyoming upslope-flow action could bring with unusually rich low-level moisture involved.

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Our SD PING trail for this day. Our NEb PING trail for this day. [PING date is ending date in UTC.]

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