08/19/2026
On the final day of our photography tour, our guests were treated to a nice little setup that started near Saskatoon. As we drove into the cumulus field, a storm fired and immediately spawned a quick landspout that we all saw from the vehicle. We tracked that storm for a little while, and it put down another brief, rain-wrapped, tornado as it passed Highway 16. But it began to weaken as it crossed the highway. Craig and I saw that it was going to cross over a couple of lakes. We decided, because the lakes might weaken our already weakening storm, that the new storms blowing up just south of our position were beginning to look better. So, we bailed on that storm and raced south to get near Southey for our final storm of the day.
We started this portion of the storm chase behind the storm. When storm chasing, this is rarely where you want to be - unless the sun is low and you get a full double rainbow, of course! We tracked slowly behind the storms, chasing rainbows as the storm became more organized out front. Nearer to sunset, we got in front of the base and were treated to a stack of pancakes as the storm ramped up with the late arrival of the low-level jet. We even witnessed our third brief tornado of the day during twilight hours, right before capturing this lightning image after dark.
