June 6 Powder River Pass/Buffalo, WY storms

Today's chase began in Belle Fourche, SD.  Our plan was to get further west near the Big Horn Mountains with hopes of latching onto a nice supercell.  We headed west on SD 34/WY 24 through Aladdin, WY and Hulett, WY.  Along the way, we stopped at Devil's Tower (cue music from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"), and I apparently need to watch the movie to understand the significance of this monument.  It has been added to my list 😋  In either case, we continued southwest into Moorcroft, WY via US 14.  We enjoyed lunch at Donna's Diner, and the food was excellent.  From Moorcroft, we headed west on I-90 into Buffalo, WY, where we had a pit stop.  After lingering in Buffalo for a while, we headed west on US 16 into the Bighorn National Forest to investigate a cell that looked healthy.  It was a very curvy and hilly road, but the scenery was beautiful.  We made it up to the Powder River Pass, which was 9,666 feet above sea level.  There was even snow on the ground, which fascinated some of the guests, who have never touched snow before.  We turned around at a scenic lookout, because our data was non-existent.  In addition, there were some healthier cells forming back to our east, so we wanted to get closer to those.  Once we got back into Buffalo, we took WY 196 south and used this as our primary chase road for the cells we were targeting.  There were a couple of nice wall clouds, but the storms never got organized enough to produce a tornado.  One of the storms could not make it past the mountains, but it still gave us some nice views.  Low moisture, inadequate wind shear, and high storm bases were the culprits for no tornadoes.  We were in Gillette, WY for the night after driving 384 miles.

June 5 Lodgepole, SD storm

We began today in Lemmon, SD, and our plan was to play up near Bismarck, ND.  Because we were in decent position, and Bill did not want to drift too far away from our target area, we had a leisurely morning in Lemmon.  The guests were dropped off at the Petrified Wood Park to poke around for a bit.  After 20 minutes, we headed to a local grocery store to stock up on some goodies.  Lunch was in town at the Alaska Café.  Shortly after lunch, we found ourselves heading east on US 12.  We turned north onto SD 73/ND 49 towards New Leipzig, ND.  After driving around the town for a bit, we continued our journey north on ND 49.  Along the way, we stopped at Lake Tschida for some scenery and power waiting.  Bill also looked at data and began thinking that our better play would be closer to MT.  In addition, there were lots of chasers in the Bismarck area, which was another strike.  After a while, we opted to head north into Glen Ullin, ND, where we had a pit stop.  We ventured a couple miles out of town and found an abandoned house to photograph.  Soon, a cumulus field started bubbling.  Bill gave us another quick pit stop in Glen Ullin, and we were in chase mode immediately after that.  Storms were beginning to fire closer to MT, so we needed to head further west.  Unfortunately, that meant we had to blast south on ND 49 down to Elgin, ND, and take ND 21 west.  We drove through the town of Mott, ND, and then headed south on ND 8 into Haynes, ND.  From there, we turned west onto US 12 into Hettinger, ND, where we continued our drive south on ND 8/SD 75.  At this point, the storm was approaching Ekalaka, MT, and it looked good both visually and on radar.  We eventually headed west on SD 20 past Reva, SD until we got about halfway to Buffalo, SD.  Bill had us pull off to the side of the road so we could observe the impending storm.  Then, we headed south on some dirt roads until we got back onto SD 79.  As luck would have it, there was a broken down big rig  with 5 blown out tires that was blocking our path.  We were fortunate that there was a way to get around it, or else the chase would have been over.  In either case, we continued south on SD 79 until we reached the town of Newell, SD.  Our storm was turning into a high-precipitation blob, so we let it move away from us to enjoy the awesome sunset and display of mammatus clouds.  After driving 387 miles, we found ourselves in Belle Fourche, SD for the night.