Day 24 Report & Pictures

[Paul Sherman]

We started the day in Dodge City with 2 possible Chase targets, the 1st in Wyoming and the 2nd near Burlington (Colorado)

As we progressed towards Burlington and got some Petrol we noticed a Sharpening Dryline just 30 miles to our west so out decision was made. 1 Tower tried and rooted pretty quickly at about 3pm.

- 1st Tower on the Dryline

We followed this cell North and it produced Nickel to Quarter sized Hail

- Sat in the Hail Core

- Andy sampling his biggest ever Hail!

- The Chase Beast took another Hammering

- Looking fine until we decided to head south to the cell of the day

A huge Mothership HP Supercell formed near Kit Carson so we intercepted at about 745pm, this had a persistant Rotating Mesocyclone and dropped a brief Tornado near Sielbert (Colorado)

- Rotating Mesocyclone

- Just after the Tornado Lifted

Ian has got a better shot of the tornado as I was driving and saw it to my left and screeched to a halt, it was un-mistakable and was seen by myself, Ian and Andy!

Headed east after that to stay in Burlington and shot some incredible Cg Lightning, Nick has the most amazing captures on his Video Camera of these but here are just 2 of mine

This was an Incredible Chase which had pretty much everything and we have a very happy new member of the team who is still smiling

Paul Sherman

[AndyNEEssex]

How to start with describing today in Colorado - I think chronologically will give you a good feeling of its majesty.

We left Dodge City, KS at approx 0930 CDT, originally heading for the Cheyenne, WY area, but by late morning it was becoming evident from various sources that SE Colorado was going to be the place to be. As it was a dryline was setting up, though dewpoints weren't massively brilliant (high 40's, low 50's).

We were refuelling in Burlington, Colorado, at approx 1230 MDT, for the drive towards Limon, when we viewed some nice towers going up, some 22 hours since I met up with Paul, Nick and Ian at DFW!!

These towers soon started to break the Cap, and a nice LP began to form, with some superb cloudscapes:

This led to some nice sized hail (As modelled by the lovely Paul S):

The Barons was also showing some rotation by this point - Guess where we were???!!!

The first storm then started to fade, but was showing a bit of LP organisation, just to tease us:

The decision was then made to move back along what was starting to become a rather meaty squall line to our SSW.

During this period the boys decided a jaunt South was in order to allow the line to pass nice and close by, and also allowed an encounter with a nice rain and/or hail band wrapping around the 3rd of the HP storm centres.

As it was when we moved to the East it became apparent that a nice mothership MCS was forming, pretty much above our heads!!

The most un-nerving part of this was the rotation was definately causing the cloud to drop above our heads!!! As it was it finally did drop about 5 miles away from our position, for about 5-10 seconds. You will see from Paul's photo the aftermath of the tornado, but as we were heading away from the area it was pure luck Ian looked over his left shoulder to see the tornado drop. As the system was HP and we were right at sunset I couldn't get a photo off - Ian tried but his camera failed him and Paul, who had now pulled off to the side of the road was about 15 seconds too late, and caught it roping out. This was the only disappointment of the day!!

We then swiftly moved East to escape a Bears Cage situation as the squall line began to outflow - rather rapidly as were were doing 80 (65 really officer) and it was almost keeping pace on the downslope. Some lovely lightning pics were then taken by Paul, and as the storm got slightly too close for comfort we buzzed East to Burlington, where the day really started with the initiation 8 hours before, to overnight before the fun and games wedgefest promised tomorrow.

It has been an amazing first day, and I realy have to thank Paul, Nick and Ian for al their sage counsel and answering of silly questions.

Here's to a superb day, and a huge day tomorrow

Andy

[Nick F]

Few more pics from me too ...

- lots of dust being drawn in and never seen so much tumbleweed blowing across roads

Lightning stills:

Great day's chase in Ern Colorado!

[Roger J Smith]

Great pictures again Paul and Nick, and nice job Andy on your first day ... you must be excited about the outlook, even I am, and I'm not there.

Love that shot of the tumbleweed, I noticed the winds were gusting to 66 mph at Wray ahead of the storms, seems like you were getting that too.

Edited May 22, 2008 by Roger J Smith

[Louise]

AWESOME pics guys!!! Very best of luck today/tomorrow - stay safe..

Edited May 22, 2008 by Louise

[NL]

Shame you couldnt capture that tornado as it could have possibly been the

only one as SPC dont have any reports of tornadoes at all yesterday. Sure to see

a lot of action over the next few days though and with the huge rainfall forecast

getting bogged down could be a concern just hope these tornadoes wont be all

'rainwrapped' too..!! Good luck.. .

[pottyprof]

Super photos guys.. Nice to see the long drive was worth it..

[Tom Lynch]

Had a really good chase day, it had a little bit of everything. We found an elevated view point on the plains near Kimball, Colorado. We then just sat and waited for storms to initiate. One of two developed north of us in Wyoming, we let them go but shortly after that they started to develop south of us. We set off to intercept them. They were huges storms and were putting out golf ball size hail and strong winds. At one point the dust being blown reached 100s feet into the air. We had some hairy moments on the dirt tracks and with the tumble weeds, some of the large tumble weeds traveling at 30-40 mph towards you can damage your car so we had to swerved constanly to prevent being hit. We saw the funniset thing ever two large dogs out in the fields chasing the tumbleweeds. We then arrived a point where we could get look at the storm structure. It at that time had a good structure and was putting out some regular lightning bolts.

Above you can inflow into rear (left hand side) of storm. As we sat there a bolt hit so close it made the power cables next to me sizzle and my window was open. We could see then that this cell was started to fade out and we moved south to intecept some more cells moving northwards. Within an hour we were sat watching three or four strong storms, which were closing in on us.

Just after I took the last photo above Dave spotted a lowering in the place where you would expect a tornado. We watched and followed and sure enough there was rotation in the storm and I shot video of what is being reported as a tornado. Dave is still pondering what we saw. He says that there was a meso and it was in the right place wants to look at more data. However it was tube like and at one point touched the ground. Whilst watching it we got cut off by another cell and had to core punch to get south into clear air. Boy was the lightning pounding around it left imprints on my eyes. We ended the night in Goodland , Kansas.

Tom Lynch

[Cookie]

great images again guys