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Having decided a few days out that the Miles City, MT area was my target for today, I drove most of the way the day before and stayed overnight in Gillette, WY. The drive up to Miles City wasn't that far on the day so I arrived in good time and sat in a park and read my book. I had to keep one eye on the sky and one on the giant ants I found, or more likely, they found me and were sizing me up for lunch - they were huge! They gave me the heebie jeebies so I retreated to the car.
Nothing happened for a very long time, and when one cloud finally started to grow I decided to take off after it. This was completely foolish as after about an hour, I was 50 miles from my original target and it almost evaporated into thin air! I think the cap was pretty strong this day and I thought it would break, at least I hoped it would as I'd driven a long way! At this point I should have turned around and gone back towards Miles City but I kept driving east along the road with limited visibility, hoping to get to a point when I could see the sky clearly. There was also absolutely no cell coverage in the area so the next town was coming up, maybe there would be something there?! As I was about to pull into town I caught a glimpse of something in my rearview mirror. Yep, you guessed it. A storm had fired back west! I managed to get some cell signal and grab a GRL3 snap and decided to head back that way, it wasn't directly where I was before but further north so the best way was thankfully not back along the road I'd just driven but I decided to go north and then west.
Through my mistake I did however get to see the growth of a supercell from its early stages into a fairly mature tornado producing storm. It was absolutely beautiful, perfectly backlit by the sun and the skies were totally clear all around, although I hope I don't have to see this again because it means I am in the wrong position!
Whilst I was driving I grabbed some shots of the storm. As you'll see I was such a long way away that I knew by the time I got very close to the storm it would be too dark to see any tornadoes that may or may not happen so I decided to hang back and get some good lightning shots.
The first two below show how the storm going up as far as it can in this level of the atmosphere and then spreading out into its textbook looking anvil shape.
I ended up driving from Baker to just west of Glendive and parked up along the 200-S and set up my camera. Fiddling in the dark with my camera, trying to swat away the billions of mosquitoes that swarmed everywhere, I managed to change the settings so the pictures didn't come out as good as I'd hoped but I was pleased to have caught the CGs that were popping out of it. The storm looked so beautiful with its silouhette against the black night sky and the stars above it, this was one of those moments of chasing I love, just you and Mother Nature out there. (apart from the bugs and other creepy noises you get at night!)
This storm produced one tornado near Brockway, MT about 2100 and I love the comment on the SPC site "there are some conflicts between reports on timing and exact location" as two separate chasers provided reports....
There was more than one lesson to learn from today; I drove well over 200 miles unnecessarily having waited around all day for the action, which happened not far from my original target because I was lured away by an immature cell and of course missed out on the tornado. I am glad to have come away with some good pictures and the experience!
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2010 Chase 
