September 19th featured an east/west outflow boundary in eastern Colorado with upslope flow into the Palmer Divide. By mid afternoon, higher based storms for over the Palmer and drifted eastward along the boundary intercepting deeper moisture. A couple of supercells formed, but constant mergers disrupted their intensity. One such storm south of Genoa, CO spun pretty hard and had an extremely intense wet microburst with winds over 80 mph! Those rocked the van as I quickly positioned to face the brunt with the front end of the vehicle. Golfball hail and those high winds could certainly blow out windows! Structure of the storm was pretty nice as a huge blob of RFD wrapped around the meso. I was surprised there wasn’t a tornado warning issued! Enjoy the pics!
May 20th Northeast Colorado Tornadic Supercell
May 20th looked decent on paper. Strong shear, decent moisture, and moderate CAPE set the stage for intense storms. An outflow boundary/cold front pushed slowly southeast across Wyoming and northeast Colorado. We dropped from Cheyenne into Weld county, Colorado as numerous towers formed. We noticed a column of dirt in the distance (some 20 miles away!) and it turned out to be a landspout tornado that occurred near Greeley. We couldn’t get close enough for a good photo, but a few guests got a shot or video or two of it from our vantage point. The storms congealed into a tail end supercell and were very electrified! As the sun set, the forward flank downdraft lit up with the most incredible orange I have ever witnessed in a storm! After sunset, the sky was illuminated with numerous continuous lightning strikes that were a treat to watch. Click on an image for a larger pic. Enjoy!
July 19th Western Kansas Severe Storm
July 19th took us to southeast Colorado and southwestern Kansas. Although the set up wasn’t stellar by any means, there was enough shear, instability and moisture to support severe storms, including supercells. Mid afternoon south of Seibert, CO a supercell formed and tracked southeast. It eventually merged into a line of storms with embedded supercell structures as they marched all the way to Garden City, Kansas. Near the town of Tribune, Kansas on cell in the line spun pretty strongly and produced 80 mph winds, baseball hail and even a funnel cloud. This was a nice way to wrap up the Great North Tornado Hunt tour as the guests got to see a little bit of everything on this tour!
