June 21, 2010 Pics

A pretty wild chase yesterday with amazing structure. This was more of a mini hurricane than a supercell! The radar image and especially the velocity scans were nothing short of incredible. Large, intense rotation within the cell at it's center point. Tornadoes were there without a doubt, but could not be seen as it was deeply within the intense precip core. I think a couple of chases caught some glimpses and hopefully they got some images. I was too busy trying to flee as I felt like a giant blender was trying to eat me! LOL!!

In hindsight, I wish I would have dropped further south. But when the western cell began to merge with the eastern cell, which I was on, there was intense rotation and one heckuva an impressive ground-dragging wall cloud seen in the pics below. Several funnels formed and there was good rotation. If a tornado would have dropped, the contrast would have been amazing along with the structure. So, I gambled and stuck with it.

I've seen such storm mergers before just like this where the eastern cell takes over. I was pretty convinced at one point looking at radar that this was happening. However, mother nature is pretty fickle and the storm merger reorganized further south of my location. As my cell became strongly outflow dominant, radar confirmed that I was indeed too far north. With crappy road networks and a storm rapidly overtaking me, I spent alot of time trying to get back out ahead of it AND back south. I finally did later, but was too late to get the best part of the show.

However, my position NE of the cell gave me a unique perspective on the storm and some very impressive and even scary structure. Enjoy!!