Tag: Colorado

The target for the 29th was very singular — looking for a storm of the day to develop off the higher terrain of southeast Colorado as it feeds off upslope flow, strengthening as it moves southward. I made the 400 mile trip up the Texas Panhandle after a much needed hotel stay in Seminole. By the time I reached Kim, Colorado, the storm was gathering strength, but still had a long way to go.

The base was broadening and getting sculpted as it started to spit out purple flares of lightning. The lightning trigger did a great job with that phase.

As the storm started to approach and get better organized, I repositioned east-southeast. I made a stop to get a couple shots and noticed a concentrated dust plume at the downdraft interface. I took it for a gustnado, but seems like it got reported as a landspout. The rear dashcam showed it lasting about 30 seconds but I couldn’t see any clear indication that it was connected to anything in the storm base.

From there, I repositioned further to the east southeast. About 6 miles from Kim, I stopped at a beatiful overlook near a homestead that featured a couple old pine tree snags. The storm was dropping lightning bolts just to the north and kept me seated in the car except to drop and retrieve the camera. It was fascinating and fearsome to listen as each CG caused the barbed wire fence to hiss with induced current.

I later found that one of the strikes showed a landing point. The bolt itself is very faint, which makes me think the exposure just caught the dwindling portion of the strike. Looking closer shows an orange plasma plume at the point where it hit the hillside.

As I moved further east, the base kept trying stay tight as eddies of vorticity rippled along the downdraft interface, but it wasn’t quite ready yet.

The forward flank wanted to nudge me further south at this point, but there were no reliable road options down into the Carrizo and Tecolate Creek drainages and surrounding mesas. So I hustled an unfortunately long 15 miles further east so I could keep flanking the storm southward. By the time I was back on track, heading southward with it, the storm was much better organized, but my crisp, clear views had grown mushy.

Fortunately, back lighting from the sinking sun helped with some silhouetted contrast. By 0014Z, a wall cloud was taking shape beneath the updraft. As RFD precipitation encircled it, the wall cloud dissipated. I took that opportunity to nudge a little further south.

After a couple minutes of driving, the wall cloud reappeared behind the curtain of RFD and took on a tight cone shape. I quickly stopped and started snagging photos and video. It certainly looked tornadic, but as far aways as I was, I couldn’t be positive. It was quickly reported as a tornado by several chasers who apparently had better vantages.

As the RFD precipitation grew heavier and contrast more difficult, I moved further south to see if the storm would cycle in the clear again. It lost some organization so I started leading it further, trying to figure out whether I wanted to chance the unpaved road through the Cimmaron River valley, or take the long way around through Campo and Boise City. I opted for the paved route, so I left it earlier than I wanted so I would have a chance to catch it on the other side.

After passing through Campo and heading south, I realized my gas tank was on empty and estimated range falling about 12 miles shy of the next fuel stop in Boise City. What a dumb move. I had completely forgotten to fill up in Campo before heading out to intercept the storm. I slowed to 55 mph to get the best fuel economy possible, occasionally pulling off for others to pass in the double-yellow areas. I managed to pad a few miles into the estimated range as I drew closer, but it hit zero miles about 6 miles outside town. I hoped the computer was being more alarmist than reality. Fortunately, I made it to the gas station without needing to hike to it with my spare gas container.

Once that stressful deal was taken care of, I headed back west to catch the storm as it continued dropping south. Twilight had deepened and it was difficult to get visuals of what was beneath the base by this point.

As it approached, I backed off to a spot about 15 miles west of Boise City and grabbed time lapse shots, trying to see what was happening beneath the base by way of flickering lightning. Several times, the core thickened up and looked pretty ominous. About that time, spotter reports showed up reporting a tornado. I couldn’t tell if they were from chasers close enough to know for sure, or if it was from overenthusiastic reporting. I figured I’d either wait for a survey, or see what my time lapses picked up.

The time lapse footage didn’t show anything convincing. It was too dark, too far away with too much intervening terrain to have a clue from my vantage. Other chasers later challenged the tornado reports as inaccurate, which is unsurprising. Which helps demonstrate how difficult it is to make a positive tornado ID on a messy storm after dark.

After hanging out with that for a while, I drifted southeast to a point about 6 miles southwest of Boise City, and tried to snag some parting lightning shots before calling of the chase for the night, with learned lessons about checking fuel levels before launching into the heat of the chase.

This tornado has now been documented in the NOAA Storm Events Database:
EF-U | Las Animas County, Colorado | 29 May 2021 | 0024–0029Z (30 May)

May 23rd started off with a good rest and freshening up in Wray, Colorado. I headed west toward Limon to catch the first in a couple rounds of anticipated storms that day. I was running late though and approaching Limon just as the first tornado warned storm of the day was sweeping past on its way north.

I considered flanking the storm northward on Route 71, but was concerned that positioning for the notch could wind up running me off into untested roads and that hanging south could leave me gazing mushwise into the back of the storm and never able to cut back ahead. So I headed east to Genoa and took County Road 31 north in hopes of using that as my flanking route. 

The road was great. Until it wasn’t. About 13 miles north, I stopped short to see a couple chasers delicately trying to turn their vehicles around on the slick surface of a portion of the road that had seen a lot of recent rain. 

I tried another option on CR3S to get east then get back north but that wound up sketchy too and figured at that point I was probably not going to keep pace or catch up with that lead cell. Looking back at the storm’s path, slow movement and other chaser angles, I could have used Route 71 to keep with it, but didn’t know at the time it wouldn’t press eastward more.

I set myself back up on the less messy legs to the west of CR31 and watched for new development south of the original storm. 

For a while, I cruised around on CR3N, 28 and 3R watching the back building line dress up the wind turbine fields. The wind pressing into the boundary and forcing up the storms was fierce and I had to be careful every time I opened car door to be sure it didn’t get ripped out of my hands or crash into some part of me or my gear.

Around this time, as the boundary and line of storms continued advancing slowly eastward, a new batch of cells were popping to the south and a bit east of the boundary. So I cruised south to get back to I-70 to hedge bets on both of them and reposition faster.

As I got down to Genoa, a new area of organization nudged into the line. I watched it and grabbed some shots, but as expected nothing materialized as it filled in with precipitation and moved off to the north. I should have taken this as a hint of more serious opportunities in the making with the tail end of that line. But at the time, I figured I was still mostly in landscape & moody sky mode.

I hustled east to Flagler to gain some ground and be ready for developments to the south. I set up about a mile south on CR5 and watched ongoing development and crepuscular rays drifting across the bubbling towers.

At 2241Z, I was just beginning to drive off for another vantage, when the tip of a funnel caught my eye. I quickly pulled back into my spot, grabbed the still and video cameras and hopped out to capture it before it disappeared. The wind was still fighting me every step of the way. As soon as I released grip on my tripod mounted video camera to fire off a couple still shots, it got toppled. I hadn’t extended the legs yet and so it didn’t fall far, but still a few anxious seconds being sure nothing was damaged. 

After extending the legs and then bracing it against my body, I got the video started and went back to alternating between stills and re-framing video. Meanwhile, the funnel had thickened up and had my hopes up that it might fully condense. It never took things that far, but was a gorgeous sight as it drifted into dappled sunlight and glowed brilliantly from behind. It showed off for about six minutes before rain started to fall and I jumped back into the car. It went on for another couple minutes before receding as that notch in the line continued northward.

I filed a spotter report for a funnel with no ground contact visible from my vantage due to poor contrast and intervening terrain. Later on however, a video surfaced on Twitter from Paul Smith/@PaulMSmithPhoto showing ground circulation from his vantage in Arriba. (https://twitter.com/paulmsmithphoto/status/1397038858265579521) I went back to my footage and stills with strong contrast edits and found frames that showed the dust plume at 22:45Z.

I had some time to enjoy that moment as I drifted further east on I70 and storms along and ahead of the boundary to the south started to get stronger. I lingered around Stratton and grabbed more shots of those as they moved in.

By 0000Z, the storms to the south were getting serious enough that I wanted to get in a good spot to surf them as they piled in. I headed north on SR57 and then east to Idalia where I had a great view of a cluster of multiple rotating updrafts moving in as the sun was starting to drop behind them. The glow through the precipitation cores was stunning and even though I wasn’t watching an isolated supercell, I was still captivated by the beauty and ominous quality of this gang of marching storms.

I continued to surf this scene east into Kansas along Highway 36 stopping at various points along the way to take in the heft of it. As the sun set, the brilliant yellow-orange glow set the cores on fire and went from one kind of spectacular to another. 

I wanted to pause briefly in St. Francis to watch one of the cells move in, but the line to the south began to surge quickly and I had to keep moving out of the way. A quick check of radar showed an ominous hook develop just as the storm moved past the town. Fortunately only some straight line wind damage was later reported there.

A few miles further east at Wheeler got me far enough to catch a breath and capture the whale’s mouth and lightning over grain silos and elevators. And then on from there, watching the gaping gust front flicker its way eastward.

I finally let it go around 03Z near McDonald after about 8 hours of chasing. Despite some tactical goofs early on, this turned out to be a prolific and awesome chase day.

The tornado is now documented on the NOAA Storm Event Database:
EF-0 | Lincoln County, Colorado | 23 May 2021 | 2245Z–2250Z

This second day of my chase trip started with a stalled cold front/boundary across northeast Colorado. With moderate instability forecast beneath 40+ kt shear, supercells were on the menu, with a slight possibility of a tornado, particularly with any boundary interactions. Before I got rolling, my target was Sterling, Colorado, with a goal of lining up convection firing on the dryline or stalled front and shooting for best options as it followed or began to cross the boundary. I really wanted to be mindful of the boundary’s location and not to follow storms too far across it before retargeting anything new firing upstream with a fresh fetch of unstable air.

I began the day boondocking near Scottsbluff, Nebraska, under low, gray stratus and headed southward. I had to take a photo detour near the Wildcat Hills when I saw how the low clouds and fog were dressing up the terrain.

By the time I got Sterling, it was evident the boundary had set up near Akron and was curling up to the northeast corner of the state. So I decided to set up shop further south near Akron. As I headed that way, a horseshoe vortex arched above the bubbling cumulus. That seemed like a good sign for vorticity charging the atmosphere.

I eventually sidled up to Akron and watched as agitated convection sheared downwind and distant upstream bases grew heavier. Eventually a cell to the southwest started to get itself together and I moved a dirt road a mile east of town to watch it approach. It was distant enough that the base was mostly in profile, but some detail was becoming visible with scud fingers constantly grabbing my attention.

I finally moved north a bit to keep pace with it, figuring it still needed time to gather strength as it gradually edged further east and closer to my chosen road network. Just three and a half minutes after making that move I glanced out the side window and noticed a thick rope funnel descending to the tree line. I quickly pulled into a broad field access, grabbed the telephoto and snagged a few quick shots. I foolishly tried to get the video camera set up on a tripod to record it, but in the 60-ish seconds it took me to fumble around with that, the tube had started to separate and degenerate. So I grabbed a couple more shots of that before it completely dissipated. I dropped a spotter report for a funnel with inconclusive ground contact. Others that were closer confirmed it as a tornado though.

For being 26 miles out, I was pretty happy with how the telephoto shots turned out. I kept pacing it further north, to see if it would produce again. It developed a new wall cloud with a robust cauda, but the terrain was preventing me from getting a decent idea of what was happening at various points, as far east as I still was from it.

Meanwhile, convection to the south was getting serious and I needed to keep an eye on that to be sure I had escape routes and needle-threading options ready to go. At 2003Z, some scud fingers to the southwest caught my eye and I took a couple shots. The time, position, and angle on those shots correlate to a tornado report. Very much uncertain from my perspective though.

As I kept heading north, a new storm formed in my path and developed rotation. I followed it from behind and had a chance to watch the base lower a bit before it wrapped up in precipitation. The sky was getting a bit crowded for my taste by this point, so I stopped at Sinclair to let things move by. I headed northeast from there to see if any new convection might interact with the boundary, but nothing new was firing southward and what was already active was moving too fast and far out of reach to catch up with. So I finally called it off a few miles north of Holyoke and watched things recede to the north.

I decided I’d get a hotel for the night in Wray to freshen up for the next day’s setup. On my way back south, I found this sassy bull snake sunning in the road. Before moving it into the field, I decided to be annoying and interact and get a bunch of photos. It was a persistent lunger, but only bounced its head off me even when I gave it a chance to latch onto my arm. Something seemed to be wrong with its mouth, which had a strange smirk to it. Looking close at a couple photos, I think it had an abscess/infection in its lower right jaw. Hopefully it recovers from that.

After checking in to my hotel, new storms were moving in from the west. So I explored a bit and found an unpaved road on a ridge just north of town that had a great view all around. I stopped there and shot stills and time lapse as the line moved in. Deep into blue hour, it’s fascinating how scud bombs, fingers and edge-on shelf clouds get especially ominous. This one showed plenty of rising motion and a bit of rotation on time lapse, but that was still consistent with the side view of a fresh shelf cloud ingesting a bit of vorticity as it moves by.

As those storms receded to the east, they put on a beautiful, moonlit lightning display that ended the day perfectly.

The tornado is now documented in the Storm Events Database:
EF-0 | Morgan County, Colorado | 22 May 2021 | 1929Z