Sunrises on the High Plains can be wondrous experiences, even more so when the vista includes part of South Dakota’s Badlands. As a night person, I seldom indulge in sunrise due to usually being fast asleep at this hour, after a day and evening of storm observing. In this case, I awoke too soon while car camping, to the early northern-latitude daybreak and the pitter-patter of raindrops on the vehicle. Intermittent, elevated convection had kept forming much of the night (sometimes flashing and thundering me awake), and moving overhead behind the previous evening’s convective complex. These beautifully illuminated showers represented the last, highest-based vestiges of the old “mushroom stem” formation, as I often refer to it: the elevated, low/middle-level convergence zone and band of elevated convection that often follows nocturnal mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) atop the cold pools.
7 S Wall SD (5 Jun 20) Looking ENE
43.8899, -102.2264