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.

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

This looks very much like a tornado--but 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…

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!

Outflow being recycled — 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!

Outflow wall cloud? — 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.

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

What is this? — 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!

Lacking Visible Rotation? — 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.

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

Structure is awseome — Structure was awesome!

Just south of the storm was some 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!