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.

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).

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…

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.

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.

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 😉