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Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Wyoming Life

There was a lot of wet weather and strong winds across Wyoming on Saturday, and they combined to produce a short-lived but threatening landspout tornado in Sublette County.

Big Piney resident Stephen Nelson was out on his deck when he noticed something swirling around north of town.

“I was doing something and thought, ‘That’s a dust devil.’ Then it was a big dust devil. Then it was a funnel cloud," Nelson told Cowboy State Daily.

The funnel cloud snaked its way from the ground up to the ominous storm clouds overhead. Nelson spotted it around 11:55 a.m., and it was gone by noon.

“The storm has moved over towards the Pinedale area,” he said. “I’ve heard, second and third hand, that they’ve lost power in Pinedale.”

, over 732 Rocky Mountain Power customers reported power outages in Sublette County around 1:30 p.m. The issue had been addressed by 2 p.m.

However, landspout tornadoes weren’t the primary concern of Wyoming’s meteorologists on Saturday. They were keeping a closer eye on potential 70-mph wind gusts and whether this weather would bring any precipitation.

“We’re busy today,” said meteorologist Taylor Wittman with the National Weather Service (NWS) office in Riverton. “We’ve got some active weather, but the tornado was a bit of an anomaly. Our major concern is 50 to 70 mph wind gusts across Wyoming Saturday."

[{"type":"text","text":"It’s A Twister?"}]

Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day said the funnel cloud spotted near Big Piney was “a well-formed landspout.” It’s like, but not exactly, a tornado.

“A landspout is defined as a tornado that does not arise from organized storm-scale rotation,” he said. “You get a circulation near the ground that is brought into an updraft, that then causes that funnel situation.”

Even though they tend not to be long-lived, landspouts should be taken seriously. Day said they have a destructive potential comparable to that of a regular tornado.

“You can get 70, 80, 90 mph wind gusts in a landspout,” he said. “They're not going to bring the intensity of the wind and the destructive power of a tornado, but they can certainly cause damage.”

Landspouts tend to be more common in the spring and summer, especially when Wyoming’s area gets humid. When summer thunderstorms carry moisture into Wyoming, the likelihood of landspouts increases, as was seen in Sublette County on Saturday.

As the system moves, there’s a chance more landspouts could form. Day believes it’s a risk worth taking seriously.

“We should be on our guard for more of these, especially in northern and far-eastern Wyoming, for the next 36 hours,” he said.

[{"type":"text","text":"Watches And Warnings"}]

for Riverton and Lander on Saturday afternoon, anticipating penny-sized hail and wind gusts as high as 60 mph.

Meanwhile, 15 counties in central and eastern Wyoming were under a 

 until 9 p.m. Saturday. The NWS was monitoring “a cluster of strong thunderstorms” with gusty winds and hail.

By 2 p.m., there were thunderstorm storm clouds over northwest Wyoming, too.

Wittman said the sudden surge of severe weather is primarily due to an abundance of moisture, which is what most of Wyoming needs.

“We actually have some okay moisture in the area today, by Wyoming standards,” he said. “The system moving in is bringing enough moisture to make clouds and produce storms. The physics in the air is enough for some of the stronger storms we’re watching.”

Some spots in Wyoming, like Johnson County and the Bighorn Basin, might get 0.1 inches of precipitation from this system. It's not a lot, but every drop is welcome.

Severe summer thunderstorms often come with a higher risk of strong winds and hail, which is exactly what Wittman and his colleagues were watching on Saturday.

“The main hazard will be Saturday afternoon and evening,” he said. “We’ve already seen some 60-mph gusts, but the primary threat will be along western Fremont County, and the Wind River Range, down to Rock Springs and the South Pass area, and that will move eastwards toward Casper.”

Wittman emphasized that this was a dynamic system that was being closely monitored. The timing and severity of its impacts can change quickly, so everyone in the affected area needs to be on their toes.

[{"type":"text","text":"“These storms can intensify as the day continues,” he said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Sunnier Sunday"}]

All the watches and warnings issued by the NWS end before midnight, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be sunny and dry on Sunday. Wittman said the Saturday system might continue impacting Sunday’s weather.

“Saturday should be the bigger day for thunderstorms, hail, and wind, but we do have the chance of showers lingering overnight, and storms again on Sunday,” he said.

However, Wittman doesn’t anticipate an ongoing threat of landspouts. The Sublette County landspout was an oddity during a day of active summer weather in Wyoming.

“That landspout was probably the result of a storm initiation,” he said. “That’s how you might get a little spin-up, but the bigger risk is strong winds, not landspouts.”

Sublette county tornado 6 20 26

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Rare Tornado Spotted In Sublette County On Saturday | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A tornado made a rare appearance in Sublette County on Saturday, bringing with it more than 700 power outages. Meteorologist Don Day called it a "landspout" tornado which has the capability of 90 mph winds. "They can certainly cause damage," Day said.

Rare Tornado Spotted In Sublette County On Saturday

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Outdoors

Wildlife

A few weeks ago, tourists chuckled as a young grizzly named Storm was chased off by an angry sandhill crane, but nobody was laughing Thursday when Storm devoured an elk calf alive in front of about 100 people.

The calf was alive for roughly 15 minutes as it was being eaten by the 3-year-old female, wildlife researcher John Winnie Jr. told Cowboy State Daily.

Winnie was there with students from his Yellowstone National Park wildlife ecology field class.

“We were kind of awed at watching a bear take prey," said Winnie, an associate teaching professor in the Department of Ecology at Montana State University.

“But we were shocked and surprised at a calf staying alive that long,” he added.

“There were mixed comments from the crowd,” as 

 near the shore of Yellowstone Lake, Cody resident Vince Vanata told Cowboy State Daily.

“Some people had empathy for the elk calf, and some people were thinking it was just nature taking its course,” he said.  

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Good Find For A Bear"}]

Similar to deer fawns, elk calves have little to no natural scent, Winnie said.

And for about the first two weeks of their lives, the calves can’t walk well enough to keep up with their mothers, he added.

So, their mothers will stash them in hiding places and then leave to go feed, occasionally returning to nurse the calves.

Unfortunately for the calves, that trick doesn’t always work, Winnie said. Sometimes, the mother’s lingering scent from a nursing session will be enough to tip off a bear, wolf, or coyote.

And other times, a calf might move at just the wrong moment (or, from the predator’s perspective, just the right moment).

That might have been the case with Storm on Thursday, Winnie said.

He wasn’t there when the grizzly first found that calf, but said one of his students witnessed the moment. The bear’s head suddenly snapped in the calf’s direction right before she moved in and found the helpless young elk.

That probably means Storm heard the calf rustling in the grass, or caught a glimpse of it moving, Winnie said.

Once Storm started eating, it was hard to watch, he said.

The calf cried out as it was being devoured, but no other elk heard it.

“The nearest cow elk we saw were probably out of earshot, 400 to 500 yards away,” Winnie said.

Vanata said he thinks Storm had earlier been hazed by park rangers from another location.

“I think that if the rangers hadn’t had moved the bear, it wouldn’t have been there to find that calf,” Vanata said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bears Take A Heavy Toll"}]

The elk calf’s gruesome fate was a common one, Winnie said. Elk calves suffer high mortality rates, and predation is one of the main causes.

And most of the predation comes from bears, both grizzlies and black bears, he said.

“I don’t think a lot of people grasp just how high elk calf mortality is,” Winnie said.

It’s thought that as many as 90% of cow elk are pregnant going into spring, “and most of them carry their calves to term,” he said.

So, there might be as many as 80 calves per 100 cow elk when the birthing season starts, usually in early June.

However, “by the time the first of the next year rolls around in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, we’re down to around 20 to 25 calves per 100 cows. And most of the calves that were lost were lost to predation,” Winnie said.

Wolves have the advantage of hunting in packs, so calves aren’t worth their effort, Winnie said. They tend to concentrate on adult elk.

Coyotes will take quite a few elk calves and deer fawns, but bears take the most by far.

As lone hunters, bears have slim odds of taking down adult elk, so they focus on calves during the spring.

And because they can’t count on finding the calves by scent, they’ll scour the ground hoping to find a meal, Winnie said.

He said he’s seen bears apparently “working a grid pattern” in areas where they think calves or fawns might be.

And it’s not uncommon for calves or fawns to be eaten alive, Winnie said.

“I’ve seen it twice before, both times with black bears,” he said.

When taking down larger prey, predators rely on “killing bites,” Winnie said. That’s because they can’t risk injury from an adult prey animal fighting back.

But with calves and fawns, bears can just use their “overbearing weight” to pin down the hapless prey and eat at leisure, Winnie said.

Sometimes mother deer or elk will try to distract the bears away from their young, but usually to no avail, he said.

“I saw once where a white-tailed deer got right in front of the bear, raised her tail and jumped, but the bear didn’t even notice her” as it focused on the fawn, he said.

A sandhill crane recently had better luck scaring Storm away from its young.

When Storm got too close to the crane’s nest, the bird came at the young bear, standing tall with its wings spread. That was enough to 

Storm belongs to famous Yellowstone grizzly lineage. She’s the daughter of Snow, one of the park’s most visible bears.

And Snow in turn is the daughter of Raspberry, likely Yellowstone’s most famous living grizzly.

Raspberry has been missing for about a year and is feared by many of her fans to have died.

Bear eats elk alive storm bloody 6 20 26

<title>Yellowstone Tourists Learn That Nature Can Be Brutal When Grizzly Attacks Elk Calf | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Tourists in Yellowstone got a brutal taste of reality Thursday when a grizzly went after a live elk calf and devoured it. John Winnie, an ecology professor at Montana State who was there, said most people don't "grasp just how high elk calf mortality is."

Yellowstone Tourists Learn That Nature Can Be Brutal When Grizzly Attacks Elk Calf

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

Business

On summer nights just outside of Powell, headlights still crest a small rise and swing past a hand-lettered marquee leading onto a wide gravel lot. 

The families in those cars will spill out of their trucks and SUVs with lawn chairs, blankets, and sleepy kids in pajamas.

Some of the locals go so far as to bring full-size couches in their pickup beds and camp stoves to make s’mores and other snacks as the overhead sky darkens and an impossible sweep of stars begins to shine.

Then, as it has since 1949, the screen at the American Dream Drive-In will flicker to life at what is Wyoming’s last, bonafide drive-in movie theater. 

The owner, Kathleen “Pokey” Heny, didn’t set out to become the owner of this American treasure. 

She and her husband built a home across from it decades ago — when it was called the Vali Drive-In — primarily so they could see Powell’s landmark Heart Mountain from their windows. 

It just so happened that they were also right across from the drive-in as well, a place Heny remembers fondly.

“I have really good memories of going to the drive-in as a kid,” she said. “I’m one of seven children, so we’d float up in the station wagon in our jammies and pop our popcorn at home. 

"Probably only twice a summer, but I just love the memory of that.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Best Seat"}]

Heny and her husband cleared a line of sight to the drive-in’s big white screen from their property so they could watch movies from their garage. 

“We could sit in the garage and watch a movie across the road,” she said with a chuckle. “And now you can tune your radio into it, so if you don’t have a speaker, you could listen to it on your radio.”

Then one day in 2004, her husband returned from the lumber store with a rumor that was about to forever change Heny’s life.

“I heard the drive-in is for sale,” he told her. 

“Well, I have to buy it,” Heny recalls telling him. “I don’t want it to get knocked down. I don’t want it to become obsolete.”

Heny had no idea what she was getting herself into at the time. 

She’d never owned a business, and she didn’t know anything at all about the movie business.

“At that time, it was reel to reel,” she said. “You actually had to splice the movies and put them together.”

Her first years were also lean — heartbreakingly so.

“There was a huge learning curve. I was happy to have 10 cars a night,” she said. “We really thought we were doing something if we got 15. 

"So just trying to get it up and running, and figure out how to run the movie, order the movies, use a movie broker.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Steep Learning Curve"}]

Dusty pickups and kids in pajamas are at the core of Heny’s successful business model, which packs in as many as 150 cars a night in the summer.

While many of the nation’s remaining 370 or so drive-in movie theaters have leaned into attracting tourists, Heny has instead leaned into community.

“What we did to build it back up is just changing it to become family-friendly,” she said. “I learned that the ones who spend the money are the parents. The teens? They don’t spend as much money in the concessions, which is where you’re going to make your money. 

"You don’t make money on your ticket sales at the door, because that’s what goes to the movie industry.”

That dynamic means Heny is not showing movies with “R” or “X” ratings. It’s strictly PG-13 and on down.

She’s also learned not to shoot for the latest blockbuster right out of the gate.

“If was to show let’s say, ‘Toy Story 5,’ which is playing right now, I’d have to keep that for three weeks,” she said. “Well, three weekends in a row at the drive-in isn’t going to be successful for me.”

Eventually, she’ll bring that move in, but she’ll wait until it’s been out for a while. 

“Then I’ll get it on what they call the break,” she said. “And guess what, they’ll come back and watch it a second, sometimes a third time.”

Movie producers wouldn’t let her drive-in have such a movie anyway, she added, because she’s only open three nights a week.

“They can put it somewhere like Billings or Cheyenne and run it five times a day,” she said. “So that’s kind of how the drive-in business works.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Eternally Vintage"}]

The beating heart that is keeping the American Dream alive when every other drive-in in Wyoming has died goes back to the post-war golden age of drive-in movie theaters. 

Land was still abundant and cheap, and it was newly accessible thanks to a new post-war highway system. 

The economy was booming. Moms and dads had real, disposable income that could be devoted to entertainment. And there were also lots of moms and dads — so many that their children would become known as Baby Boomers. 

These families wanted fun, family experiences, and they had cars with lots of flashy chrome to show off to their neighbors, who were also at the drive-in chasing the same thing. 

The dynamic fueled nearly 4,500 drive-in movie theaters at the height of the sector between the 1950s and 1960s.

“This was originally built in 1949 by a man who had been back East and gone to a drive-in of sorts,” Heny said about the origins of the American Dream. “It was just a big, white sheet stretched across some trees and he just watched and watched.”

The man was so enthralled with watching movies this way, he came home and built his own drive-in theater right next to his property. 

Heny still has many of the speakers from the original drive-in, and she still uses them. 

“I always tell people these are 1949 monotone, metallic-sounding speakers,” she said. “It’s not surround-sound stereo. It’s a little buzzy, but I still like to listen on the speaker.”

She also still has the original popcorn machine. 

“We gutted it and our candy is displayed inside the glass part of it,” she said. “I wanted to keep that a part of the drive-in.”

She kept the patio so people could sit and eat there if they wanted, with tiny tables. 

The drive-in has become known for its cheesy fries, but also offers burgers, hot dogs, donuts, big soft pretzels, popcorn, and ice cream sodas. 

“We still have the big marquee out front, with the letters where you have to climb up on the marquee to put the big plastic letters up,” she said. 

Over the last 22 years that she’s owned the theater, Heny's had the occasional guest suggest that she should just get rid of things like the marquee or the old-fashioned speakers. 

But there’s no way that’s ever happening.

The classic metal speaker boxes aren’t some kind of issue to be fixed The marquee is, in her opinion, a masterpiece. As are the retro Formica countertops in the concession area, which she and her sister spent hours scouring the internet to find.

“I find it funny when kids will say, ‘You know what, you should knock this down and make it more modern,’” she said. “I’m like, ‘It’s a 1949 building. It’s a very ’50s vibe, a very ’50s-diner-type vibe. It’s red, white, and blue. It’s the American dream.

“This is your dream to come to the drive-in,” she added. “Modern? No, that would take away from what it is.”

Heny doesn’t have to look too far to see that she is right. 

Her drive-in routinely has upward of 100 cars a night, often more. She’s drawing people in from all over Wyoming who want the vintage experience of a retro drive-in movie theater. 

Some of them like the experience so much, they have made her drive-in a tradition every summer.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Surviving The Digital Age"}]

Among these is Jeff Ernster of Laramie, who bills himself on Facebook as the 

. He is a fan of all drive-ins in general, and a big fan of Heny’s in particular.

Because the drive-in’s core business is local, it’s got a huge social atmosphere that draws people in.

“It’s just so much fun watching everyone,” he said. “You get to see the kids running around playing out there, and adults as well. It’s just a whole different atmosphere.”

The American Dream in Powell, Wyoming’s last operating drive-in theater, has survived since 1949 as a retro experience for movie-goers. The current owner bought it in 2004 just to save it. “I didn't want it to get knocked down," Kathleen Heny said.