Day 5: May 31, 2014

Total Miles: 483

 

Total Driving Time: 7 hours and 30 minutes

Our third chasing day was quite exciting! We left our hotel at 9:00 am MDT in Sturgis, SD to head towards our target city of Broadus, MT. We launched a weather balloon in Broadus, MT at approximately 11:45 am MDT. We lost signal around 740 mb once again, indicating potential equipment failure. After lunch, we went north of Broadus to chase a cell (~2:00 pm MDT). The storm looked promising early on, but failed to produce anything significant. 

Radar indicated a stronger storm to the north of where we were so we decided to head towards Miles City, MT (~4:20 pm MDT). We arrived around 5:15 pm MDT, just about 5 miles north of Miles City, MT. This supercell with rotation produced multiple wall clouds and one funnel cloud. There was a green tint to this storm, indicative of refraction due to hail associated with this storm. This storm had a maximum reflectivity of 70 dBZ. Overtime this storm took a shelf-like appearance (~5:45 pm MDT), showing signs of outflow dominance. We moved southeast in order to get away from the storm since it was coming in our direction. Once we were far enough from the storm, we headed east into North Dakota and then south to our hotel in Sturgis, SD for the night. We arrived at the hotel at approximately 11:00 pm MDT.