5/28: Chase summary

Didn't end up seeing much this afternoon and evening, but here's a short summary of my brief Memorial Day chase:

Was on the road around 4:30 PM, and arrived at my initial target of Larimore around 5:25... Sat at this location for about a half-hour watching things. Large updraft to my north blew up, so I took off after it, but wasn't gaining any ground. It raced off to my northeast and became the Pembina County (ND) / Kittson County (MN) beast... Bases were fairly elevated on the CU field above me and nothing was happening to my west, but did finally get a visual on building towers to my west-northwest a little after 6:00 PM as I continue northward on Highway 18. Gave my buddy, Jared Guyer, a call and he stated that a location around Pisek would be good, so continued north on Highway 18 and sat at a location about 1 mile east of the 18 / CR-15 junction. An updraft had developed into a decent cell to my west-southwest and to get into better position and after another short consultation with Guyer, decided to head towards Park River. The storm dissipated and I let it pretty much rain itself out as it passed over my location 2 miles north of Park River around 7:10 PM. Afterward, I continued north on CR-12 to CR-9 East, then proceeded back to 18. Here, I turned south in attempt to stay east of the frontal boundary... Stopped at the junction of 18 and CR-19 to again monitor the boundary to my west. A few towers attempted to go up, but were really struggling to stay together. Bases were still fairly elevated at this point, so I pretty much called it a night and began the trek back towards Grand Forks. A few scattered showers had developed in eastern Nelson and western Grand Forks counties by the time I had made it back to Highway 2, but with my daylight diminishing fast, I followed my initial plans to head back home.

All in all, not bad of a chase, since I did see a couple storms. The cell to my north was pretty much the storm of the day and I had to ditch it since it took off so fast to the northeast. I'm not sure why the thing took off like it did, with the remaining convection this evening remaining right along the boundary and not budging their way eastward very fast at all... Boundary layer conditions today were fairly critical and I had noticed just before leaving work that dewpoints in both Fargo and here in Grand Forks had actually dropped 2-4 degrees between 3:00 and 4:00 pm. And with the clearer skies over the valley and the extensive CU-field to the west, it was pretty clear that the surface low was wrapping in dryer air from the southwest. So, I'm sure that had some sort of effect on our BL conditions today. I think on top of that, our capping inversion held up a little bit stronger than what the models had been indicating earlier in the day. I guess if I had to have done anything different, I would have drove straight north out of town on departure. I dismissed the greater effective shear to the north since very little instability was up there. The area where the Pembina storm initiated in was under cloud-cover almost all day... Either it destabilized pretty quickly once those clouds started decreasing, or some other sort of trigger came along and sparked those updrafts up there. Either way, it was much easier for the updrafts to get rooted in the BL in that area...

One of these days, I'll make one of these chases worth the time spent!
A more complete log and a few select photos will be posted tomorrow, when I get more time...

A big thanks goes out to Jared Guyer and Bryan McQuade for providing some nowcasting support for me today... It was a big help!