Chase Log: May 31, 2020

The Montana Monster

May 31, 2020 – Southeast Montana – Well-structured supercell near Capitol, MT – Buffalo, SD.

Ah yes, one of my favorite chase days and storms of all time. We started May 31st in a hotel in Gillette, Wyoming after snagging a cool storm the day before that developed some gnarly structure after sliding down off the Bighorn Mountains in north-central Wyoming.

May 31st was the 3rd day of our 2020 chasecation and so far, the first ‘bigger’ day that we were really looking forward to. Starting early in Gillette, we headed for southeast Montana via the scenic route through the Wyoming side of the Black Hills, stopping at Devil’s Tower (duh).

After a great stop at Devil’s Tower, we continued our trek northward into southeast Montana. We took Wyoming 112 up to Montana 323, which for anyone who hasn’t taken this road, it is LONELY. We went probably 40 mins or so without seeing another car, or many houses for that matter. We had made a quick, I mean a *quick*, glance at where we would stop and regroup for a bit before making our move towards a target area. That place we picked to stop: Albion, Montana.

We drove further north after passing through Alzada, Montana shortly after crossing the border. As we approached our next stop, we began to realize that we still hadn’t see really any cars, very few houses, and even little cattle! As we approached Albion, we were coming up a hill to what was supposed to be the town… but when we topped this hill, here is what we found…

Albion, which was on both our map program and Google Maps, had in fact not been a town for 56 years. It was hilarious. Don and I both just broke out laughing as we topped the hill. The black and white edits really make you feel the loneliness of this place, nestled on the side of a hill on the windy Montana plains.

What wasn’t so funny, was that we were in the middle of actual nowhere, not too long before a chase, and we need to be very careful with gas. Well, at this point, where was the closest gas? Buffalo, South Dakota. We drove all the way to Buffalo to fill up on gas and we found a hotel there, so we booked it. Also, I am convinced that this hotel had the fastest wifi on planet Earth. The SPC meso page seemed like it was loaded before we even clicked on it, and we were still in the car in the parking lot!

Anyway, we headed back to our target: Capitol, Montana (where legends are born). We found this epic place to sit and relax for a few hours, atop a butte that rose above the sweeping prairie land, with the stiff breeze whistling through the pines of the butte.

Here is Bell Tower Butte:

May 31st would end up being the best day of our 2020 chasecation. The SPC issued a slight risk for SE Montana, NW South Dakota, and SW North Dakota. We were not really anticipating tornadoes on this day but we figured structure could be a decent bet if storms could remain mostly discrete. So we sat atop Bell Tower Butte and awaited CI.

Later that evening, storms finally fired southwest of our position, but given the wild lack of roads in this area we had to sit and wait for them to get to us and we would make some pretty strategic road maneuvers once they did. We were able to come down off the butte towards the most discrete storm shortly before the storm got to us given a favorable forward progression.

The storm developed several lowerings and a poorly organized wall cloud.

We then had to retreat back the way we came up the Butte (which was our initial intention). We of course had to make a stop on top of the butte for a photo, by this time the storm began a bit of a rightward turn, suggesting to us that it was go time. A massive scud bomb was violently shoved vertically into the base of the storm as the storm’s downdraft quickly grew much larger during this photo, looking south.

What I would give to go back and reshoot this storm from this location with the better photography practices I have now.

Given our very limited road options, we had to make quick work of getting off the butte and eastward to get back in front of the storm. We had to blast east and eventually south, but for most of this maneuver, we struggled to maintain a visual of the storm’s base due to the terrian. It wasn’t until we made our southward turn and were back onto the plains that we saw incredible structure developing before us.