June 9 Circle, MT supercell

Fortuna, ND

US/Canada border

Circle, MT

We began today in Weyburn, SK, and we were looking at 2 possible options.  There was a potential play along the warm front, which was about 2 hours north.  However, tornado potential seemed to be better in southeast Saskatchewan (SK).  After heading north out of Weyburn, prospects looked bleak for isolated supercells.  We did a pit stop in Francis, SK, and Chris looked at new data.  He decided to head back to Weyburn for lunch and figure out what to do from there.  After lunch, there were promising cells initiating in Montana (MT).  We needed to blast south and get back into the United States.  As we were getting processed at the border, one of the cells was looming over us, and the border agents were asking us how bad it would get.  We explained that it would most likely be a lot of rain and small hail.  They brought our passports back to us and sent us on our way.  We stopped just outside of the border crossing and checked out a small wall cloud that was forming to our west.  As we continued south into Fortuna, ND, we got blasted by golf balls and torrential rain.  It was intense!!!  After we emerged from the core unscathed, we stopped near a quarry and took pictures of the storm that passed.  The structure was decent, but there was another storm about 2 hours to our southwest that was begging to be chased.  It formed near Lewistown, MT, and it was moving east at 15-20 mph.  We blasted west on US 2 to Wolf Point, MT, and we continued south on MT 13 to Circle, MT, where we finally intercepted the storm.  Even though the road network was sparse, we still managed to intercept the storm due to its eastward motion.  As we got closer to Circle, the storm had a very nice base, and it looked like it was going to produce a tornado.  The structure was the best I saw my entire trip, and it eventually had a mothership appearance.  We followed the storm all the way to Wibaux, MT, with stops in-between to take pictures.  Hoping for a view of mammatus clouds, we drove south out of town to let the storm pass.  Due to debris cloudiness, the sunset was not great, and we were not able to see mammatus clouds.  We found rooms in Glendive, MT for the night after driving 454 miles.

Mothership approaching