June 30
Convection began early this morning in the mountains west of here and we were on our way out to see what was up. The air was thick and smoky this morning so it took a few miles before we got to see any sort of base to the grey mass that was already moving in from Rocky. Halfway to Caroline we could finally see nice towers going up out in the mountains, but most had no bases, those that did were a mile high, and the majority were falling out already.
We almost turned around right there, but it was such a nice morning we decided to head out towards Tay river and see if anything could get going out there. A constant stream of holday trailers heading home all the way out, then hardly anybody around once we got out there.
Nice towers were continuing to brew up over the front range of the Rockies and lightning was starting up over the foothills so we decided to tour down the trunk road south from Corkscrew mountain. Traveling down the pine tree tunnel along the east side of Marble mountain we were treated to numerous electric blue CG lightning strikes to the nearby peaks. You can’t see far in there, but you didn’t need to.
There seemed to be some good action towards the James Wilson rec area, so we headed that way, into some heavy rain and more close strikes but missing out on the pea sized hail we found in the grass at a pit stop.
That was about it. We could see the storms were taking a south turn as they were exiting the mountains(not towards home) and it was still early, we decided to head to Limestone mountain and see if any more goods would fire up around there, but the show was mostly over and all that was left were a few nice towers that roared up suddenly and died quickly.
On our way home, one of the nicest cells of the day rose up west of Rocky, a giant mushroom tower with a nice low base, but we weren’t into a u-turn and it didn’t amount to anything anyway.
Nothing got very far out of the foothills today, with hwy#22 seemingly the cutoff point. Heard a report on TWN of a funnel near Nordegg and enough pea sized hail to accumulate in Bragg Creek but nothing else.
No chance to grab any lightning in the rain and trees, no real interesting cloud structure that we saw, a few deer posed for us and we spotted a grizzy bear but it wouldn’t let us take it’s pic, so here are a few shots of the Alberta foothills around and west of Limestone mountain.
