Tag Archives | weather

June 5th Eastern Colorado Tornadoes

June 5th kept us close to home. A warm front draped over east central Colorado would become the focus for intense supercell storm development by late afternoon. It provided a differential heating boundary where storms erupted on the south side of it and interacted with the strong low level shear on the boundary. We sat between Anton and Cope and watched as a strongly tornadic supercell anchored at that point and produced multiple tornadoes. All in all we counted 4 confirmed tornadoes. The storm was a tad messy, and thus photos from the day clearly show the rain/hail as we took each shot. A couple of the tornadoes appeared to be strong, but fortunately only destroyed a barn in the wide open eastern Colorado plains. Tour 5 and Photo Tour #2 enjoyed the event as both were in great position to watch the entire tornadic cycle of the supercell.

May 22nd Eastern Colorado Supercell

Day 1 for Photo Tour #1 and day 4 for the Prime Time tour took us to Colorado where highly sheared supercells formed by mid afternoon.  One storm formed west of Limon and tracked generally along I-70 eastern for several hours. The storm had super LPish structure, but was never a threat to produce tornadoes due to lower instability. Nonetheless, it was a pretty sight to watch and was extremely photogenic.  All in all, a successful chase day for everyone!

May 19th Terral, OK Tornadoes

Day 1 of our Prime Time tour lived up to it’s name. A warm front/outflow boundary was situated over southern Oklahoma with an extremely moist and unstable airmass. CAPE values were in the 2500-3000 range with 50 knots off bulk shear. We sat near Wichita Falls, TX awaiting messy initiation, which did not disappoint! By mid afternoon tornadic storms formed just north of Wichita Falls and moved into southern Oklahoma. This storm became HP quickly and a rain wrapped tornado occurred. We decided to drop a bit south and play a tail end storm east of Wichita Falls which ended up being the Terral, OK storm. It spun wildly and was extremely electrified! Soon a wall cloud formed but wrapped in precip obscuring its view. We decided to drop south and sneak in behind the area of precip and were rewarded with 2 tornadoes, one of which nearly wedged. A fun day, a lot of work, but very high rewards!