7/16/2011: Bowdon, ND Tornado

After a sacrifice to the weather Gods, trip 5 managed to document a tornado near Bowdon, ND yesterday. This was certainly the highlight of the trip, and I am glad that many good people got to experience their first tornado with us! In the morning/early afternoon, it was uncertain what the exact forcing mechanism was going to be for convective initiation (see afternoon MCD). However, by late afternoon, it became clear that sustained supercells were going to grace our presence. We targeted the first cell showing signs of convective battering near Bismarck, and raced for our morning target of Bismarck to Jamestown. While we were a little "late" to the party, this cell produced a nice stovepipe tornado ~ 5 southeast of Bowdon. We hung with this cell for the remainder of the day, but it couldn't establish more signs of strong low-level rotation (see time lapse). We stuck around to watch lightning for a little while before calling it a night in Fargo. More pictures of the entire trip when I return home...






Time lapse can be found here.