July 25 – Sundre Supercell chase
There have been plenty of convective goodies to watch every day since last post. A good drenching to kick off Westerner Days, some nice puffs to watch not far to the north on Saturday, then a beautiful low-precip foothills supercell for Sunday. Everything has been avoiding the yard, so far.
Waiting and watching most of Sunday afternoon for something to pop in the hills, I had pretty much written the day off, it seemed like nothing could get going and perhaps the cap would win the day, so I got doing some other things only to miss the beginning of the eruption west of Sundre.
Brandon was down there sniffing around for initiation all afternoon and shot me a txt that there was something going up, and after a peek at the radar I was on the road west hoping for a sneak around the backside of what was now a really good looking storm. It was churning away just west of Sundre when I left, not moving much until I got halfway to Caroline, then it took off east and I missed some interesting looking stuff on the trip to Sundre as it got away on me a bit. I didn’t see any hail in Sundre but there was probably some there somewhere. I caught up with it again just east of Sundre and bailed south on #22 to avoid precip, then followed it across to Didsbury, where I talked to a couple Mounties who were watching the show from the detachment. They said small hail and lots of spinny stuff was just ahead of me. Came across the first hail shred of the tour just east of Didsbury at the #2a instersection, a few leaves and branches but no carnage that I saw. One of the zillion photos from this storm on TWN‘s website is of some rather large hail, approaching golfball size from Didsbury, must have been from just north of town as the core of the storm appears to have squeezed between Olds and didsbury.
I haven’t heard of or seen anything about funnels, which is somewhat surprising, the whole thing was rotating for a good long time, lots of little twisty updrafts on the backside, walls forming up and flying apart.
Brandon was on this thing from it’s first breath and was on the mothership side of it the whole way, I can’t wait to see what he’s got on his blog Prairie Storm Tranquility.
Thanks to Jon Koch who sent in the first two photos and a Youtube Video from Olds of what appears to be a wall cloud spinning up. There were lots of folks out watching this beauty along the tour, groups of cars parked all along the way with cameras out, more people than I have ever seen on an Alberta storm. If there was a funnel somewhere, there should be a photo or video of it. Good to see many eyes on a storm like this.
Radar loop(~1mb)
Storm track
Beautiful photos Pat, glad you made it out! Now some lightning photography would be nice!
July 26th, 2010 at 9:42 pmBeautiful storm, Pat… did you see the one that crossed over the border and dropped a BIG tornado in NE Montana yesterday?
July 27th, 2010 at 10:26 amThanks Brandon, Dann
My wife would be jealous if she heard the way I was talking to it every time I pulled over for a look
Dann I missed the nasty one watching some pretty rude ones south of Calgary and over by the SK border last night.
July 27th, 2010 at 5:18 pmAnother big one around Lethbridge. Action all over the place!
Nice pictures of the storm. I watched this one for awhile coming up from Calgary. Thankfully, I was a passenger in the car. Had I been driving I would have ended up in the ditch because I kept watching the sky. I managed to get some shots from just east of Calgary before sunset: http://troyjohnstone.com/blog/2010/07/big-sky-country/
July 29th, 2010 at 9:37 pm