25 Jul 2014
It was late May and all was calm. Eric and I had traveled all the way up to South Dakota for a possible few chase days. Driving through some magnificent country side and passed Mt. Rushmore which we made a stop at during our rest days. So the 28th of May we were passing through the town of Glasgow, Montana and were asked by some French chasers if they could interview us about storm chasing. They were part of the French media who were in the USA filming their storm chasing holiday. After providing them with some tips on how to stay safe around these super cells, we continued on to Malta, Montana where we intercepted a beautiful shelf cloud during an amazing sunset and an abandoned house as a picture perfect location! Many areas of rotation and very strong straight line winds in Malta which picked up a lot of dust. But unfortunately no tornadoes with this cell.
That night we met a great group of people from Canada on a chasing holiday. They had a pretty heavily armored vehicle to withstand some large hail!
On the 6th of June we caught up with the Canadians and went chasing in Texas centered around the town of Channing. We tried multiple attempts to access a super cell which had produced a tornado, but due to the high precipitation of the cell it was too hard to see beyond the rain curtains. Following this cell for a few hours as it tracked east until the cell died. The terrain also became un-chaseable with canyons, so we called it a day.
On the 8th Of June it was time for New Mexico! We had chased there before, but this was chasing with a difference…… 6000ft elevation! The road network was not that great so we had to ‘punch a core’ which was dropping 2inch hail – very scary. Actually only missing the three inch hail by about 500m. Once we were through it revealed a beautiful wall cloud. Stopping to watch it drop many small brief multi vortex tornadoes just south of Wagon Mound.
Upon returning to the other side of the storm, we found approximately 30 cars with broken windscreens and hail damage. Because of the elevation, the hail was really dense so did the maximum amount of damage. We followed this storm east where the elevation suddenly dropped 2000ft and the storm dissipated, but reformed around Amarillo, Texas later that evening.
On the 14th of June, Eric and I were live streaming on behalf of KAKE news Witchita, Kansas. We were able to get an EF-0 tornado just north west of Stockton. It was on the ground for a few minutes, not fully condensed, but a spectacular rope tornado that we got reasonably close to. That night also capturing a night time rope tornado that touched down near Giltner, Nebraska. Great day out chasing!
Thanks to Eric Duncan my driver and forecaster! Was great to be able to chase with some new Canadian friends – Craig Hilts (Craig’s photography Page – https://www.facebook.com/prairiefirephoto), Gunjan Sinha & Rossanna Purvis Gregory. A credit to all the good chasers out there, and what a team we made!