June 27, 2025
Statistics
Springfield, IL 12:36 PM 6/26/2025
Fessenden, ND 4:59 AM 6/28/2025
Summary
Chased central North Dakota following ICECHIP research project as they collected and measured large hail. Intercepted supercells noting wall clouds and hail shafts, ending chase at dark.
Crew and Equipment
Chase partners: Terrence Cook. Equipment: Sony AX100, Canon 60D with EFS 10-22, Samsung S9.
Video
Map
Details
Terrence Cook was working on a documentary of ICECHIP, the largest scientific research mission to study large hail. He had full press access and wanted me to interview people in various roles on the project as we tagged along on their hail intercepts. It sounded interesting, I knew several of the ICECHIP leads, and I'm always looking for new reasons to chase, so I agreed. Terrence cautioned that we might miss a tornado, and boy oh boy would we. However, I expected to already have at least a couple from other chases and wasn't too worried about missing one. I've seen tornadoes and this was a new opportunity. But by late June I was still batting zero. The whole season wound up sliding by without this documentary shoot happening, and it came down to the last couple days ICECHIP would be in the field. The setup looked promising for hail, way up in North Dakota, and I love chasing the Northern Plains, so I agreed that we should go for it. Maybe we'd see a tornado incidentally while we were tagging along too.
I planned to camp out of my van for much of this run. I left the day before, made it to almost Fargo before pulling off the highway for the night. I stopped at a Love's for a shower the next morning, a new experience for me that worked out really well.
It was a gorgeous drive through the Northern Plains on the way to Bismarck where I'd meet up with Terrence and the ICECHIP crews. When we got there we were able to say hi to a couple people, but there wasn't too much happening yet, and we spent the morning and early afternoon just hanging around Bismarck waiting.
Meeting up with Tim Marshall
Max, ND
5:08 PM
The leaders finally passed on the word for crews to meet up near the small town of Max, ND. We said hi to legendary storm chaser, engineer, and storm damage expert Tim Marshall there.
Hail Intercept Truck
Max, ND
5:08 PM
Tim bought a new truck and had it specially outfitted for the ICECHIP project to use as a large hail intercept vehicle, and then he donated the truck to the group. Pretty amazing.
A large hail guard protects the windshield, but the rest of the body was potmarked from a full season of hail intercepts.
A good chuck of the ICECHIP crew is shown here. Other groups were already assembling downstream while we awaited storms.
Cells started to initiate nearby so we strategically moved downstream.
Our target cell matured and we moved in for the intercept.
The churning precipitation core, hopefully filled with large hail:
Terrence and I followed in our vehicles as several ICECHIP instrument deployment teams moved into position. Various instrument packages were set up at regular intervals in the path of the oncoming storm. We listened on the radio as they coordinated their positioning.
The teams worked quickly as the forward flank was already overhead with rain falling and lightning striking nearby. The large hail would be arriving within minutes and we needed to be out of its way.
We stepped north into a lull between the cores of several cells and then waited for them to pass. Sunbeams struck the back sides of hail cores lighting them up with brilliant white shafts and rainbows.
We dropped down to the base of a supercell with a developing wall cloud.
The motion didn't look tornadic, but the warm backlit colors on the textured base and deep blues within the tower made for some of the most photogenic structure I'd see the entire season.
The intercept teams were done for the day, some of them heading back to Bismarck for the night. The mobile radars were still deployed, however. Terrence asked if we could come visit and check out the radar truck.
We found the mobile radar on the backside of a supercell, the dish rapidly rotating as it scanned the storm to our east, anvil lit up in gorgeous evening light. We approached and the radar operator opened the door and invited us in.
Inside the radar truck is an amazing array of screens and equipment. Seeing the radar in action in the midst of the storm environment was definitely a highlight of the day for me.
I asked about the storm they were scanning, and was told it would probably be winding down as the surface cooled off. We said thanks and started walking back to our cars, and as if I half expected it, my phone started buzzing for a tornado warning on the target storm just to our east.
We were done documenting ICECHIP for the day, so Terrence and I split to go chase on our own. I scrambled east to get in front of the warned storm.
The backside of the wall cloud came into view, lit up by the setting sun in exquisite shades of sherbert orange and deep rose. I hoped that this was my chance to get the coveted pink tube, the sunset colored tornado that is my dream shot. It wasn't to be, however. The storm's base remained quiet until it became wrapped in rain.
I had no more view from the south while a fiery sunset was ongoing to the west. I chased until dusk and then decided to call it, and pulled off on the grid to van camp for the night. A cell to my south went tornado warned, but I didn't want to deal with it in the dark, coming in from the north, so I let it just slide by to my south. Storms raged around the van as I slept.
Conclusion
From a project standpoint, this was a great chase. We followed ICECHIP on a successful large hail intercept, documenting deployments of instrumentation and a mobile radar. And this would have been a great chase in general with gorgeous late season, Northern Plains supercell structure. What made it really bittersweet, however, was missing a very photogenic tornado super close to where we spent the whole morning and much of the afternoon waiting in Bismarck. Some of the ICECHIP crew, including Tim Marshall, even made it back to Bismarck in time to catch the tornado. It would have been spectacular to have been on such a storm and tornado along with the ICECHIP group. It would have made my whole year and then some. We stayed up north on storms that didn't do it, however.
Lessons Learned
