July 7, 2019 Storms

Southeast Montana

Tempest Tours 2019 Tour 9 left Denver in the morning and drove northward, looking for storms in Montana and Wyoming. I was doubtful we could get to Montana, but the group was really good at doing long drives, and we did not have to take many stops at all (just once for lunch plus another rest stop right before the storms strengthened).

We drove north on I-25 through Wyoming and got to Buffalo as some more intense storms developed in our slight risk area. We chose to target a storm northeast of us, which required a pretty long east then north intercept route that took a couple hours. Fortunately, the storm survived during this whole trip, but it started to weaken when we got within sight of the updraft base. We stopped to view and take pictures a couple times near the Montana border. We crossed into Montana as it dissipated almost entirely.

A storm near the Wyoming/Montana border near Biddle.

There were other storms to the north in Montana. We targeted some of these, but they did not become very strong, and they did not provide many photographic opportunities. We tried a few sunset photos near Broadus, but those were difficult. There was not much sunlight making it through.

We got rooms at the Miles City Super 8 and found another storm just south of town. We stopped to photograph some lightning and got a few nice shots. More storms moved in after we arrived at our hotel, so I went out to take some more lightning pictures.

Lightning a few miles south of Miles City.

The view from our Super 8 motel in Miles City.

Our route for the day. 624 miles.

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