July 1st, 2008 - Chase Summary

After a couple of days of forecasting and looking at models, I decided to head out chasing last evening.

A few co-workers and I met up at the office yesterday afternoon, looked at some last-minute data and after setting up the GPS, laptop, and topping off, we heading off for far Northwestern Minnesota.

A surface trough was progressing eastward across the state while a cold front was dropping southeast out of Canada setting up a decent shot at storms across the area. We didn't feel we needed to go far and initially targeted between Hallock and Roseau, MN. We didn't even end up that far north.

We shot east through town and jumped on MN-220 and progressed northward to MN-4 near Big Woods. Here, we jogged over to US-75 to head further north. We remained on US-75 through Donaldson, but pulled over on a county road a couple of miles north of town. We sat here for about an hour, watching towers attempting to develop to our north, but they consistently were being knocked over by mid and upper-level flow. Storms were developing to our north on the way up US-75, but the main cell had progressed well to our East and by the time we had stopped it had taken on a multi-cell look. Although, it did have some amazing structure to it. Updrafts kept back-building to the west, making for some dramatic scenes. We had a very nice perspective on it, but would have had to really bust east to catch up with it. It was increasingly moving into bad chasing terrain, as it was... Later, it had some especially nice structure with a very nice back-sheared anvil, updraft and overshooting top. Hopefully, the pictures will do it justice!

Anyhow, the towers along and behind the frontal boundary continued to get sheared apart and nothing ever really got going. We decided to reposition southward to remain ahead of the boundary and while doing so, noticed a minor cell trying to develop to our West. Mike and Jason decided to stop to take pictures of this, while Brad, Darren and I continued on south, then west, in attempt to get a better perspective. We stopped for a short photo op, then shot back down US-75 to Warren, then headed west on MN-1. We progressed westward only to watch our cell rain itself out and literally evaporate. Within a half-hour's time, the base on this thing was nearly gone. I hadn't seen anything like that in some time... It was pretty amazing.

We decided to continue west to I-29 to make our way back towards home. We stopped at the Manvel exit to get another look at additional updrafts trying to organize, but they, too, were getting sheared apart.

We quickly went into bag mode and returned back into Grand Forks at 7:44 PM. We met back up with Jason and Mike at Blue Moose for a drink and dinner, then parted our separate ways.

While the chase wasn't a complete bust, it certainly didn't pan out the way I was expecting. Models certainly didn't forecast the mid and upper-level flow last night very well. It had, at most 50-60 knot flow at 700 millibars and while there was decent speed shear in the upper 2-3 KM's, it shouldn't have sheared things apart the way it did out there in the field. It made it look as if we had a 80 knot jetlet over us, or something. Either way, the mid-level shear was just too great to allow updrafts to get organized further west, along the boundary. Storms to the east seemed to do better in possibly somewhat weaker flow and higher instabilities.

Another limiting factor for us last evening was my mobile data accessibility. For some reason or another I wasn't able to connect to the Internet via the Verizon Data Pack I signed up for and I was having issues with signal, to begin with. For the record, Northwestern Minnesota doesn't have great digital coverage through Verizon. I'll have to remember that! ;) The GPS worked quite well and for the first time, I strictly went off the Delorme Street Atlas and the GPS to navigate. It seemed to work very well and I'm continuing to think the GPS and SA upgrade was WELL worth the investment.

Now, I just need to figure out how to maintain my Internet connectivity. The GPS Real-Time Position Tracking through my web-site (yes, it is available now!) wasn't working either, because of the lack of an Internet connection, so that was another disappointment. Hopefully, in the near future, I'll have more chances to chase and test out the mobile setup.

I'll work on getting photos up tonight and tomorrow...
Stay tuned!

Total mileage: 130.4 miles
Time elapsed: 3 hours 38 minutes
Average moving speed:: 55.7 mph
Photo Gallery: http://photos.mhartman-wx.com/