what's what with davealex

Chase: June 7, 2012. Palmer Divide

After yesterday’s strange and incredible lightning and hail storms today was shaping up to be another severe day.  The NWS ended up putting a Tornado Watch box over the NE corner of the state at 11:00 am; it was muggy due to the moisture from yesterday and more coming that was trapped in the Front Range area due to fronts, and an upper air disturbance was passing over giving some extra lift.  Shear and helicity all looked good for supercells and potential tornadoes.

I left about 2:00 and headed east on Hwy86 as my target was Kiowa, or more like Agate/Byers area.  I wanted to sit on the north side of the divide and chase whatever fired from there.  As soon as I was past Kiowa a promising cell started to form right around Byers.  On my way there two other cells started to form to the SW–although these didn’t show up on radar they were looking really nice; but I went for the maturing cell and stopped on Hwy 36 about 10 miles east of Byers.

NOTE:  Click on any picture for an enlarged and higher resolution version (they look better larger).  For the slide shows, if you have a flash-enabled browser click on the FS link in the lower right to see a full screen, high resolution slide show!

Supercell of the day as I was approaching from Kiowa.

As I was watching the storm east of Byers, this hit me.

The cell was back building and went tornado warned near Byers.  I was expecting the cell to take off and I was in good position for that; but it ended up moving south.  I then jetted toward Deer Trail and eventually to Agate and south towards Hwy 86.  I figured I could get to Simla or even Ramah if the storm continued due South where the road network gets better.

Between Deer Trail and Agate the large flat rain free base produced rotation and a funnel cloud.  It also produced some amazing texture in the anvil/downdraft of the storm!

Great texture in the coulds with another cell to the south!

Funnel cloud formed SW of Agate

On my way south past Agate, the front end of the storm looked very suspicious and as I was driving it looked like a tornado could be occuring.  There was a tornado reported but I didn’t know this until afterwards; but I did take this shot of the scud.

Inflow/Outflow SW of Agate; I believe I saw a tornado around this time.

I traveled south to Hwy 86 (near where I started) and then west to the road to Simla.  I wanted to get to the road to Ramah, but there was no way without entering the core.  I traveled south until Simla and got some amazing, and I mean amazing, structure shots.  At this time there was a tornado down but I did not see anything from my vantage point.

I then headed SW of Simla and chased until near dark.  I saw a funnel which ended up being a the Calhan Tornado.  I was able to chase about a mile east of the core for a while until I decided I needed to book it south to beat the core going west on 94 into Colorado Springs.  I ended up a little slow (due to the fast developing cell on the west side of this beast) and got into some golf ball sized hail.  The cell that formed over NE Colorado Springs also put down some half dollar sized hail.

Overall, great day.  Saw two tornadoes, a ghostly mothership, and had a fantastic chase!

Share this:

June 17, 2011 Kit Carson County Supercell

Today was a fun chase. Started off on a cell from Parker to Agate, then a brief stay with a cell over Limon, but decided on tail-end Charlie and hit up the storm near Rush. It became TVS warned as I was intercepting and it looked great! Followed this cell all the way to Cheyenne Wells where it started to tap into the moister air and had to fly south to beat the building core. Great lightning that evening around Hugo too!

Share this:

June 11, 2010 Crazy Supercell in Adams County

Another big day for weather. The estimated Instability (CAPE values of around 2000) were not as large as the day before, but there WERE going to be big storms. The storm that formed around 3:00pm over Golden that put down 3″ of hail on the ground (and 1″ hailballs) I believe was the straw that broke the camel’s back and prompted a tornado watch for all of eastern Colorado. I was getting off work and looking west the storm was just going to go north of us. So I decided to check it out, since I was there and all….

Radar of the Supercell as it was Tornado Warned

As I got out of town I heard the storm was Tornado warned, but Radar (not visual), so I figured I’d stay on this. I got north of Bennett and parked for a while.

Supercell East of Denver

I drove north a bit and the storm was looking pretty mean so I jumped out and started to take some picture and film. I heard that there were funnels reported near Barr Lake (just north of my location) as well; so everything was looking ripe.

Suspicious cloud - could not detect rotation

Could not detect rotation

For all of these shots, some looked like tornado(s) to me, but I couldn’t detect if they were rotating. There were no confirmed tornadoes in the SPC reports; so either I’m the only one that saw these (doubt that) or they were not tornadoes…I can’t report them as tornadoes unless I’m sure, which in all cases I wasn’t…

Hmmm....

Very suspicious looking clouds....

Very suspicious looking clouds....

I suspect the ominous looking formations I was seeing were something like this, and with a hill in the way they appeared to be on ground but perhaps weren’t. Regardless, really great structure and clouds!

Nice Clouds....

What a Scuddy Mess!

Nice outflow cloud getting sucked back into the storm

While south of Prospect Valley, I was watching the storm with a volunteer firefighter and we saw this. Not sure what to make of it; it looked very ominous but I could not detect rotation. Cool structure for sure!

Not sure what to make of this. It was in the outflow of the storm, but look at the structure it had as it was sucked into the storm.

Nice little hook.

This was embedded in the rain, but it was weird…and suspect!

Haven't figured out what this could have been, any ideas?

Then I saw this…which is very ominous! Not sure if it was rotating though, so can’t call it a tornado…but it sure did look that way!

Only lacked visible rotation; but it was pretty far away.

This was neat. There was an outflow that was hitting the ground and then getting sucked back up into the storm. This was visible for over 15 minutes, and was very visibly moving.

Outflow cloud getting sucked into the storm

The structure of this storm was worth the price of admission for sure!

Structure was awesome!

Just south of the storm was some surreal clouds.

Surreal clouds

Surreal clouds

What a day. Ended up not feeling too well (headache, sure it was allergies) and so I decided to head home. I ended up merging with a storm in Strasburg that put down some 2″ hail. Yikes! The overall structure of this storm was great. An awesome chase!

Awesome Supercell and Chase!

Share this:

Chase: Holy Hailballs Batman

June 10-13 were big and weird weather days here in Colorado. On June 10th, upon the drive home, a huge “mothership” supercell formed over central Douglas county.  I had left my SLR camera at home but did have a video camera, so all of the pictures of June 10 were either video capture or from my phone.

Supercell taking on Mothership structure

Talking with Scott Bennett who lives under this beast he stated that it was awesome with lots of rotating scud directly under this thing. I decided to chase for a while–but having some work to get done at home I knew it would be a short chase. I took this shot just east of Parker, south of County Line Road (Arapahoe/Douglas/Elbert area).

Supercell structure

I suspected big hail so I didn’t want to punch through this thing to get on the other side; so I decided to follow it (having a great view and good contrast). I saw several large rotations (funnels) in the clouds and lots of cool structure. I’m sure from the front this beast looked like the mother of all motherships. I decided that the storm was far enough north of my road to jump in front of it, I came over a hill and saw this…

No Rain, BIG Hailballs everywhere

I hit the brakes to get out and look at these things. Note that I saw NOTHING smaller than 1.5″ and no rain…that was weird.

Holy Hailballs Batman

I was almost with the storm when I saw this, so I thought twice about trying to pass it; there was no rain at all but hailballs everywhere, so these were obviously flying out of the south side of this storm. Given that these probably fell in the last 5 minutes, and looking at the homes I was passing with huge holes in their windows, smashed windshields on parked cars, and the frequency of these things laying everywhere, I decided punching through this stuff it would be too big of a risk.

Big 3 Inch Hail

Big 2.5 Inch Hail Everywhere

I followed the storm to Deer Trail and then realized I couldn’t get in front of it so I went home. Note there was a Tornado 4 miles NE of Deer Trail reported; I was probably watching it but being behind the storm I didn’t see it. But the structure, rotation and big hail were worth the trip. I saw some photos from the front side of this storm and it was incredible mothership structure; too bad I was too chicken to tempt the hail and get in front of it

Castle Rock Sunset

Share this: