Weather Flashback
May 2021 - Morning Mammatus (June 19, 2016)
Summary
A cast of mammatus can be seen in this scene. These turbulent clouds were located high aloft under the anvil of a towering supercell thunderstorm that developed several hundred miles to my west in Montana the day before. This storm raged on through the afternoon and evening hours of the 18 June, before eventually impacting a swath of eastern North Dakota and northwest Minnesota north of the Grand Forks Air Force Base at around sunrise on 19 June 2016. This persistent, splitting storm would go on for at least another 300 miles or so through north central Minnesota, and on over into a neighboring swath of northwest Ontario toward the Thunder Bay area - north of Lake Superior. I apologize in advance for the graininess of the scene. The graininess was a result of too little light reaching the photo receptors of my camera in early morning sunlight; despite the region's early-in-the day June sunrises relative to most other locations in the conterminous United States. Nevertheless, this morning was a very memorable one, having "turned in" the night before with the thought of this high Plains storm possibly reaching the area at around sunrise (if it "held together" long enough).
Plate 1. Morning Mammatus. Captured on June 19, 2016 at 5:20am CDT. Looking northwest from 47.93°, -97.40°.