Bighorns Boomers
Bighorn Mountains, WY
17 Jun 13
SHORT: Two rounds of morning to midday storms in beautiful Bighorn Mtns., rain from weak/dying convection WY/MT border.
LONG:
Today was intended to be a leisurely trek from Buffalo WY to MT, but not by the Interstate. Instead we had all day, thanks to a lack of substantial severe-storm potential until day-2 in central MT. As such, we aimed for a reunion with the Cloud Peak Skyway and its resplendent vistas of the Bighorn Mountains, followed by a trip across the Bighorn Basin to a stop somewhere in south-central MT for the night. We weren’t planning on a storm chase and didn’t have one, per se.
Yet storms found us–and in one of the most scenic of places. A line of elevated thunderstorms rolled through the mountains in mid-late morning. This unusually encountered but most welcomed situation offered forenoon storm-light, and very interesting backgrounds for wildflower-landscape photography that ranged from eerily brooding closeups to deeply textured, pastoral meadow scenes one might better expect in the Austrian Alps. Given Elke’s heritage from the latter area, is it any wonder that she so wondrously appreciates the June wildflower show in the Bighorns?
Adding to our gallery from 2007, we also focused up-close on some gorgeous floral displays, whether from just the ubiquitous lupines, lupines with arrowleaf balsamroot, smoke towers–towers of prairie smoke flowers that is, Nelson’s larkspur (a highly toxic plant belying its beauty), mountain goldenbanner, a variety of false dandelion, or the common white locoweed that is the bane of western stockmen. We even saw a double puff of smoke!
Round one of storms passed quickly and harmlessly NE of the Cloud peak area by midday, however it left behind two prime ingredients for further convective development in a weakly capped, high-country lift regime: an outflow boundary and moisture–each of which were cooked in sunshine at ten thousand feet. Duly primed, additional deep convection began towering upward throughout the central and southern Bighorns, including overhead. Safety considerations (don’t want the first lightning strike to zap one’s noggin) and lunchtime hunger prompted us to evacuate the high country and head toward the basin, whereupon we took one final look back at a now storm-blanketed range.
Late lunch in Worland (which was pretty good) preceded a trek NNW toward Montana, through Greybull and Lovell WY. This part of the basin is desolate, with a great deal of bare, rocky ground and salt deposits. That’s related to the very dry climate, a result of being surrounded by mountain ranges with only a small gap in the north. Even that small gap sometimes lets low-level moisture creep in; so the vegetation got a little greener as we cruised out of Lovell toward the MT border. An expansive area of mostly orphaned anvil wafted overhead from some earlier storms in the Absaroka Mountains to our W, dropping a light, gentle rain on us as we crossed the border. What a peculiar novelty this was!
Rain in such a dessicated area often cools the air a lot evaporatively and leads to a rich, earthy aroma, and this was no exception. We welcomed both as Montana welcomed us. We enjoyed the views of the Bighorn River from the highway, called in motel reservations in Roundup for the night, bought a road atlas at the Billings Barnes and Noble outlet, got a late dinner in Roundup, and settled in for the night…anticipating our first central MT chase day ahead. This northern Plains trek already had been richly rewarding, and the following day would pile on that reward with a good dose of adventure!
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Our PING trail for this day.
Thunder Basin Thunder
Ogallala, Thunder Basin and Buffalo Gap National Grasslands (NE/WY/SD)
17 Jun 13
SHORT: Early elevated storm CDR, back-of-MCS mammatus show eastern WY.
LONG:
BANG! That was how our day started, as a very close lightning strike awoke us from slumber in our motel room. Elevated storms had been rumbling overhead for some time during the early daylight period, their rain pattering a stay-asleep-please lullaby outside; but that vicious blast on the trailing side of it all was a literal eye-opener. [During a later visit to CDR, we found out from the motel proprietors that the strike split a tree in half about a block from there.] I PINGed the rain, of course.
Anticipating that any storm potential on this day would be roughly on the way between CDR and our intended destination of Buffalo WY, Elke and I started the day with a short driving tour of CDR that we have been wanting to do for years, then saw another long-desired destination there: the Mari Sandoz High Plains Heritage Center at Chadron State College. Though small, the museum was well worthwhile–a great tribute to the life of the High Plains pioneer writer and documentation of the hardscrabble life she and her parents led in settling the Sandhills.
Leaving the museum, we saw the sun peek out but also heard distant rumblings to the W. A small, elevated thunderstorm was riding the top of the outflow pool from the morning convection. While Elke gathered some supplies at Wal-Mart, I found a nearby hilltop from which to enjoy the view. The verdant prairies of a Nebraska Panhandle springtime can make even an ordinary, elevated storm seem majestic and beautiful! We ate lunch from that hillside Country Kitchen with the grand SW view, then hit the road NW into the SW corner of SD.
Forcing for deep convection appeared rather muddled on this day, with marginal shear for supercells. Still, with…
- A weak cap in modified UNR sounding,
- An outflow boundary from the morning storms arching back across eastern WY to our SW and W,
- Orographic features in the form of Black Hills and Bighorn Mountains looming to the NW and NNW, and
- Prospects for strong and sustained insolation…
…we had good cause to expect seeing a storm at some point this day. We planned to dabble in whatever convective pleasures the atmosphere offered, then settle into Buffalo for the night with a trip through the Bighorns planned day-2 and some Montana chasing on the docket day-3. Only a few days out of Norman, our Oklahoma home nonetheless seemed so far away and long ago as we trekked across the grand vistas of the northern High Plains and around the SW rim of the Black Hills.
Visiting the adjoining Ogallala (NEb) and Buffalo Gap (SD) National Grasslands for a spell, we did some short hikes over the wide-open Plains, dodging flowering cacti while watching persistent but non-deepening high-based convective towers to our SW, over WY and along the boundary. In the distance, convection built over the Black Hills and small, fuzzy anvils started to spread off the eastern slopes of the Bighorns.
We zigzagged the mixture of paved and unpaved roads characteristic of southwestern Fall River County, skirting just close enough to the Black Hills convection to see that it was rather high-based, poorly organized, incipiently outflow-dominant and unlikely to survive in any chase-worthy form after peeling out of the hills. Meanwhile, the persistent towers to our SW stayed about the same height they had been for two hours, and the anvils got enticingly dark and thick to our W. A check of radar during a brief data-availability interlude, however, revealed a very messy multicell-supercell clustered structure that was starting to accelerate SSE across WY and surf its own outflow.
Rather than make a mad run 100 or more miles to our S to get ahead of the charging convective mess, while adding 4-6 hours to the journey to get near or past CYS (and well out of our way) then back up, we decided to take a more leisurely approach. We remained on the planned westerly track, let the growing convective mass gather its cold pool and pass off to our SW, then slip in behind its bowing forces of rampage and see what storm light would greet us. This choice didn’t disappoint!
Appropriately named on this day, the Thunder Basin National Grassland hosted a spectacular display of mammatus (looking overhead at first, then toward the S). The amazing mammatus field evolved into sinuous forms resembling pods of swimming marine mammals (view with landscape foreground), as it moved fairly rapidly southward across the open rangeland apace with the parent MCS that, by this time, was blasting parts of SE WY with no mercy whatsoever.
We stood in cool outflow air, thoroughly immersed in the resplendent scene passing off toward the southern horizon, until sunshine came out and limited contrast. Once the convection and mammatus departed, so did we, shuffling off to Buffalo–Wyoming that is, via Gillette and I-90. A fine dinner in town and a day in the Bighorns area lay ahead.
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Our PING trail for this day.
Sublime and Serene Sandhills Scenes
Filed under: Summary
near Hyannis, NE
16 Jun 13
SHORT: Photogenic nontornadic storms and skyscapes in Sandhills followed by serene sunset in CDR. Most enjoyable Sandhills storm day I’ve had.
LONG:
Forecasting for this day revealed classical trade-offs of stronger shear north, richer moisture south, and the most optimal juxtapositions of the margins thereof being in the least favorable area of the Plains for consistently successful viewing: the Nebraska Sandhills.
Hoping to catch something worthwhile along the edges of the big dune pile, we left the outskirts of the DEN area fairly early, heading NE on I-76 toward a buffet lunch in Sterling, then I-80 to OGA. Boundaries were subtle amidst weak CINH and amble CAPE, and midday to early-afternoon storms erupted almost at once in all directions. “One of [i]those days, I see!”
Convection over, E and S of us was rocketing almost vertically toward the tropopause–a strong sign of the lack of deep shear. The sights of sharp, rapidly rising storm towers beckoned attention; however with all these updrafts blasting skyward in close proximity, a southeastward moving outflow bomb (into even weaker flow aloft) was sure to follow, aimed at Kansas. So it was.
Bidding farewell to the initial eruptions that quickly accreted into a multicellular mess, we plunged northward past our familiar old friend Lake McConaughy, into the heart o’ the hills and halfway to Hyannis. When storm observing in the Sandhills, the higher terrain surrounding the roads doesn’t matter very much as long as
* Tornado potential is low;
* Bases are fairly high anyway;
* Storms aren’t going to be raging bows or HPs that make you run like hell down the few and winding roads that crisscross the area.
Meeting those conditions with success meant the next couple hours were magical. A storm about 60 miles to our N was tornado-warned–but not likely to maintain that structure by the time we would arrive, thanks to a gob of outflow air to its immediate ENE. Meanwhile another high-based cell between OGA and Hyannis, one we could see initiate from I-80, briefly gave us an interesting presentation from the SE and from the E before it lost structure.
Meanwhile the older, stronger supercell hooked hard right and ripped S almost straight down our highway, so we pounded N to see what was left of it. By the time we arrived, still S of Hyannis, the supercell was obviously becoming elevated behind its own and antecedent outflow, based on visual appearance, its mesocyclone broadening and weakening based on looks at volume scans from the Sandhills radar unit. Nonetheless, as it veered back leftward again and passed to our NE and E, the storm offered a wicked skyscape in remarkable symmetry with the undulating musculature of the foreground landscape, a scene quite unlike anything I’ve seen!
One of the greatest aspects of storm observing on the Great Plains is the uniqueness of each storm alone, and especially in its landscape. One never sees the same thing twice, and each new storm is a new opportunity for an experience unlike anything prior. This wild sky definitely was no exception, nor was the next magnificent convective specimen that soon erupted to our NW.
Just in time for the elevated storm to perish, its cold outflow buffeting is with a brisk, clammy breeze, the winds backed around to the SW and warmed some, while the new storm moved resolutely in our direction. This one was marvelous to behold from both sides–the proximal inflow region and the back of the storm.
We jumped back S a few miles and let the storm’s main core (presumably containing severe hail) pass by us to the N and NE, offering a chance to observe the sunlit side. One of my favorite scenes all spring was the one-lane Sandhills blacktop with the rainbow arching over. Another was the rainbow seeming to drop right into a rain-soaked pasture nourishing contended horses.
Standing before the amazing beauty of that storm’s west side, I had an experience best described as immersively transcendent, completely one with the land and sky. After absorbing the full, surround-vision image of what was happening, I closed my eyes, standing with arms wide apart and upward, hands open, in praise for this great gift from above. Deep breaths fully drew in the clean, refreshing, rain-cooled and dampened air, with a sweet aroma of renewal and rejuvenation. Right then, the sun came out, unseen but certainly felt, warming my back comfortably. The easterly breeze of mild outflow, infused with just a few tiny raindrops, gently cooled the front side. The moment felt like a direct connection to heaven, harmony across all physical and spiritual sensations, lasting for probably for just a few seconds but seeming to be much more.
Every good moment has to end, so we enjoyed the last of that one, then headed off toward our lodging destination of CDR with some WY/MT storms in mind for the next several days. Along the way, we encountered some precip from elevated storms just W of Hyannis. We unloaded at our room in CDR (the Westerner Motel is highly recommended…American-owned and run, and very friendly folks!), then headed to the Country Kitchen on the hill for dinner with a view.
Sunset indeed treated us to a splendid display, looking SW across the rolling green hills of the Nebraska Panhandle at some weak storms that erupted on the outflow boundary in WY. I took that shot from the parking lot of the restaurant…told you it had a view! So concluded a marvelous day of storm observing and outdoor appreciation in the Nebraska Sandhills.
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Our PING trail for this day.