Nature’s Fireworks

Mother Nature provided some fireworks for the fourth of July across the northern Plains. A few severe thunderstorms developed late in the afternoon, persisting into the evening hours. While storms initially took a while to fire due to relatively warm mid-level temperatures, there was no shortage of storms into the night.

I focused on one storm in particular across southwestern South Dakota. I had a visual on an ill-defined wall cloud with this storm and its organization seemed to waver. There was a Tornado Warning on the storm at one point and during that time, I had visuals on a pair of weak funnel clouds. Just as the storm was beginning to show better structure and organization, a cluster of cells merged, forming one large blob of convection.

This convection produced some large hail and strong outflow winds. The winds I experienced were on the order of at least 50 miles per hour. I stayed back far enough to avoid the hail and just close enough to get some photographs before sunset.