July 3, 2022 Severe Storms

Montana

Day one of Tempest Tour 9. We started the day in Denver, and the storm risk area was in Montana. This was quite a distance to cover. I called for an early group orientation (an hour earlier than normally scheduled), and we were on the road by mid-morning. Whether or not we would see storms today would depend on the perserverence of the group of guests who were on the tour. It turns out they had a lot of endurance and stuck it out in the van while we drove northward into Montana with relatively few breaks. The result was that we were able to see storms today!

Storm prediction center outlook.

We also had a small risk of tornadoes.

Our biggest issue was that the storms were moving relatively quickly, once they developed. We had updrafts in our sight when we were still on the Wyoming side of the state line. We were able to get up to I-90 and make the turn east as one of the developing storms matured into a rather substantive supercellular storm. Having a fast east-northeast route on I-94 meant we could get ahead of it with enough room to move north in front of it. However, once we turned north, a storm developed right on top of us. Very quickly, rain and small hail blocked our view of the approaching supercell storm. That was unfortunate because I was expecting to see some really nice structure. Radar showed that it was impressive, and right before the core of the closer storm opened up on us, I could see part of a very nice collar cloud around the updraft base. Oh, well.

We dropped back south to I-94 and tried to move quickly back east, but more storms continued to develop around us, and this new line of storms was surging east along some sort of gravity wave-type feature, which seemed to be moving a little faster than the deep layer atmospheric flow. This movement rendered us unable to keep up. After another hour, the motion appeared to diminish, and we targeted storms coming up from the southwest. Still, we could not get out in front, and as these storms strengthened, we were enveloped in heavy rain and hail and could not get out in front. The roads were also not paved, so that slowed our progress, but they were improved gravel roads, so we did not get stuck.

After hanging out for a bit in heavy rain, hail, and close cloud-to-ground lightning, we let the storms go and booked rooms at the Hotel Glendive - Yellowstone River. Coming into the hotel, we almost ran over the family that ran it. They were in the driveway watching the storm. Glad we saw them! When the storms passed, I saw that the solar wind conditions were good for northern lights, so I walked up to the fairgrounds to take a few pictures.

As we came into West Glendive, the sunset illuminated the storms.

Here is just a little bit of a rainbow.

The storms also had some nice mammatus.

An auroral glow behind the departing storms, viewed from the fairgrounds in Glendive.

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