May 28th Eastern Colorado Tornado Outbreak

May 28th had good potential. An outflow boundary laid across eastern Colorado from north of Seibert, Colorado to Colby, Kansas and points east. Great shear, instability, moisture and lift along the boundary, as well as the dryline extending south from Oakley, would allow numerous storms to form. A couple became tornado warned in far eastern Colorado. One particular supercell anchored itself north of Seibert along the boundary and became a tornado machine. We were on the scene early and watched as numerous tornadoes formed, with up to 3 on the ground at the same time (Total of 11!!). Several of the tornadoes were actually landspouts (nonsupercell tornadoes), however a couple certainly had mesocyclones and were therefore supercell tornadoes. It was an amazing sight for our guests to witness as we were able to get within a mile of a few tornadoes, and within a half mile of one stronger tornado! Please enjoy the photos from this amazing event!!!!!

May 13th Texas Panhandle Supercells

May 13th brought a good set up with strong convergence, good instability and moisture, but weak shear. This would result in high precipitation storms nearly anchoring across the Texas panhandle into south central Kansas. These storms would produce copious amounts of huge hail, high winds and especially flash flooding. Due to weak low level shear, they would not produce tornadoes. One particular supercell grew to a very large storm. A second storm was south of it and the inflow was so strong from the main supercell it pulled to southern storm into it and completely destroyed it! Crazy to see this happen! The large storm became a formidable high precipitation supercell as it slowly moved east towards the Oklahoma border. Lightning was also intense in many of the storms and we were treated to quite a light show as we drove back to Oklahoma City.

May 7th Valentine, Nebraska Electrical Storms

May 7th really didn’t have much going for it. It was the first day of Tour 3 and we wanted something to chase. We left Oklahoma City early bound for Valentine, Nebraska, some 650 miles away. Decent shear, but very limited moisture and instability would result in high based storms to form. What we didn’t expect was the amount of lightning that was occurring with these storms. Right around sunset they became quite electrified producing numerous cloud to ground lightning strikes. We pulled east of town as they became severe warned and watched the show. Very pretty and long lasting lightning display rolled on for hours.

Enjoy the photos!

June 20th Southern Nebraska Lightningfest

June 20th took us to southern Nebraska. Excessive heat, steep lapse rates, moderate CAPE and moisture, as well as a local boundary across the I-80 corridor would set the stage for severe storms this afternoon and evening. Clusters of storms formed west of Kearney, NE and drifted south. Their outflows kicked up new storms ahead of them by early evening. Due to steep lapse rates and optimum freezing levels, the storms were incredibly electrified! Some of the best lightning of 2017 occurred that evening, well into the night time hours. We stayed in front of the cluster of severe storms into Kansas well into the night time hours. A great day for the lightning lovers! And who isn’t one????

April 29th Canton, Texas Violent Tornado

April 29th was the inbetween day from Tour 1 and 2. However, we also ran an on call tour this day. Many guests from Tour 2, and the On Call tour, went to northeast Texas to chase. As things started to become clear, we blasted south towards the Canton, Texas area. Strong southeast surface winds, extreme instability, high dewpoints in the mid 70s and strong shear set the stage for supercell storms to form and intensify as they moved northeast. Several tornadoes formed as storms matured, with one tornado in particular staying on the ground for 50 miles and over 2.5 hours, getting a rating of EF4! Unfortunately this storm caused significant damage and fatalities in Canton, Texas as well as Fruitvale, Texas. Our hearts go out to those who suffered this day and we hope for a speedy recovery.

May 31st Lamesa, Texas Supercell Thunderstorm

The latter part of May and early June was a period of little severe threat in the US. Record low numbers of tornadoes in this period would attest to the poor set up. We searched high and wide for those little needles in the haystack, sort of speaking, for any tidbit of severe weather we could find. May 31st was one of those days. A cluster of storms formed over west Texas, and one storm near Lamesa latched onto an old boundary and rode it, twisting, turning and spinning for a couple hours. It’s structure was pretty, and coupled with the red dirt of west Texas, made for an interesting sight!

May 7th Wray, Colorado Tornadoes

On May 7th we had high hopes for something big to happen. It certainly did not disappoint! Numerous storms formed early afternoon along and south of a warm front draped over eastern Colorado. Upslope flow was deep, while shear, instability and moisture were quite good as well. Too many storm interactions early in the afternoon caused messy modes, with several tail end supercell type storms to form and be the ones that produced the most severe weather. A cluster of cells near Ft Morgan early in the afternoon would produce tornadoes along the warm front, but we decided to target more southern tail end storms that were receiving the best feed of air.

Late afternoon, our on call tour led by Caryn Hill would intercept a supercell south of Wray that would produce a pretty elephant trunk shaped tornado. It would die off fairly quickly before the main show would start. A mixture of supercell and nonsupercell tornadoes would form, nearly a half dozen in all. The final tornado is one that has been well publicized, a beautiful whitish tornado as seen in the pics below, with a reddish debris cloud nearly to cloud base! Remember SLT will get you there!

April 15th Eva, Oklahoma Tornadoes

April 15th had potential. We weren’t sure how storm modes would end up, and the bigger question was how good of quality would low level moisture be this day. The various models were at odds with each other. We decided to target the northern Texas panhandle dryline and hope storms could form, mature and then move off the dryline into better air. We sat around the Dalhart, Texas area waiting for initiation to occur. By mid afternoon storms started to form, but due to many splits, storms never maintained for very long without having merging issues. A couple storms did intensify and one particular supercell even became tornado warned southwest of Stratford. It actually tried hard as a wall cloud formed and was steadily rotating. However, its rear flank downdraft became too strong and undercut the storm’s updraft causing it to weaken. It cycled up and down a couple times, and then near Stratford, something happened. The storm was ingesting very unstable air as inflow dramatically increased. You could see a huge dirt plume skyrocketing upward as rapid lift was occurring in the storm’s forward portion of the updraft.

A tornado warning was reissued as the storm crossed into the Oklahoma panhandle. Soon a cone shaped funnel formed and was visible for about 5 minutes before it dissipated. The structure of the supercell was top notch as a sculpted liberty bell formed and spun wildly. We raced up the highway towards Eva and sat on US 64 east of town about 5 miles. An elephant trunk shaped tornado soon formed and stabbed the ground a few times and dissipated. Quickly another larger truncated cone shaped tornado formed and stirred up dirt and debris for a minute or two and also dissipated. As the supercell crossed 64 heading towards Eva the supercell had a very strong RFD surge as a new wall cloud quickly lowered to our northwest. Soon a pretty white elephant trunk shaped tornado formed, followed by a second one just to the east of the first. These two danced around for 10 minutes, often creating multiple vortices under them and then dissipated soon afterwards. By this time darkness was approaching and the storm was weakening, so we broke off our chase and headed for home. Great day and fortunately all tornadoes occurred in open country!

March 30th Northeast Oklahoma Tornadoes

March 30th took us to northeastern Oklahoma and southeastern Kansas on our first chase of the season for a day that promised intense storms and strong tornado potential. Things got messy pretty quickly in southeastern Kansas so we dropped south into northern Oklahoma. First, just south of Caney, Kansas an intense supercell formed. This storm had an amazing wall cloud that was rotating rapidly. It became tornado warned, but due to too many cell mergers, it never produced. We dropped south towards Nowata, Oklahoma as a tornado warned supercell approached. This storm had incredible structures and soon dropped a truncated cone shaped tornado (rated EF1) northeast of town that skipped across the countryside for 5-10 minutes before dissipating. The supercell continued northeast from there and dropped a second tornado (rated EF0) in open land. This tornado actually looked stronger as darkness set up, but we were never able to get close enough to it. Fun chase day, great results, and a long trip back to Denver.

November 16th Texas Panhandle Tornadoes

November 16th was an amazing day and night. Numerous tornadoes occurred in Texas through Kansas, with the most intense tornadoes centered on two supercells in the Texas panhandle. We had the privilege of witnessing them both. A couple hours before dark dryline storms erupted and organized near dark, producing several strong tornadoes between Groom and Pampa, Texas. We watched an elephant trunk shaped tornado, followed by a large cone, then a wedge as storms raced off at 60 mph. An incredible way to finish the year for us as well as the guests that were on this tour!

Tag Archives | storm chasing