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July 13th, 2010 - page 2
Crossing the river into Minnesota now near Christine, ND, and what a view! Looked like an entirely different storm at this point, with a massive vault above us and obviously all inflow problems erased.
Stopped to shoot once we found a wheat field for a foreground. Stayed here for what felt like a good chunk of time as the storm continued to slowly churn to the east. Really weird vault above where it looked like the inflow wanted to cut off. Also a small wall cloud starting to develop on the left, though it didn't look like it posed any real threat of producing a tornado.
Vertical looked pretty dang cool too. Had these odd little mid-level inflow stingers extending directly above us.
Tried to pano this but Photoshop/Microsoft ICE both hate it too much to get it done lol. Worth a shot though. The inflow seemed to extend forever to the east, just miles and miles long.
There's our little baby wall cloud again. And basically clear air above it lol.
Just wouldn't be a chase if some locals didn't stop to talk to you lol. Generally didn't mind since it's not like this storm had a tornado on the ground and we were struggling to keep up with it. Incidentally one of my favorite shots from the chase. Just something about the light at that time and adding the human element to the foreground that make it for me.
Aaaaand cue inflow problems. The massive 10-mile-long inflow tail got cut off, and you can see some precip starting to fall right into it. Probably another little cluster storm that popped ahead of it and disrupted its inflow.
Started to take on a doughnut-like appearance as rain started falling under the updraft base.
Met back with Tyler Burg at this point. He had driven back south to get a wider view of the storm. He showed us what it looked like from a distance and we had to laugh. A badly tilted over updraft that somehow still had structure that was worth shooting. See his shot here.
And suddenly, we had our inflow back. Now it really started to take on the doughnut-like appearance.
Cool light at this point with the core glowing and just a tinge of red sunset light to the left and right of the core.
Thought about letting the core overtake us at this point as the day was pretty much done.
Watched the tree line on the right begin to disappear as we were now directly under the storm.
Got ahead of it one last time just to make sure it didn't have any crazy plans as the LLJ kicked in. It was obviously done, so we packed up and followed Tyler Burg to sleep at his parents' house for the night before chasing the next day. Thanks Tyler!