May 26, 2010. Aurora to the boonies north of Fort Morgan.

First, here is a link to some photos, several are below… Click here to view the slideshow.

Didn’t know if I was going to chase this day as I had a meeting until 3pm likely I’d be behind all day. After walking back from another building on campus through the sprinkling rain, I saw a couple of nice towers starting to form; one just east of us and one to the north. Got back to my desk and took a look at some of the maps and imagery. Did a little work and then decided to take a break and check out the storm from the 9th floor; I’ve been wanting to do that for a while.

While up there I saw some impressive lowerings on the east side of the updraft base; but they were pretty far away–I’d estimate west of DIA. Then I saw a small scud-like cloud form, on the ground, out of the center of the rain shaft dominating the whole west side of the storm.

Mini Tornado without the tube? — No condensation tube that I could see, but definitely rotation/debris on the ground.

It was pretty far away; I’d guess 10 or miles? But the scud cloud started to rapidly rise from the ground. I then noticed a bunch of disturbances on the ground; a few were spinning. It reminded me of the water around a waterspout and I even asked the docs that stopped to look as well if there was a lake out there. I never saw a funnel or condensation tube but I’m going to chalk this one a very small rain-wrapped (for a while at least) tornado. It reminded me of the tornado I saw last year near Hoxie Kansas as both just appeared out of the rain and then dissapeared; although the Hoxie one definitely had more traditional structure. I put up some video (same zoom; from my cell phone) on facebook.

Some pictures of the chase:

Lowering — Nice lowering as I'm catching the storm.

Another Lowering — Nicer lowering as I'm catching the storm.

Interesting Lowering — Yet even nicer lowering_S_ I have pretty much caught the storm.

Interesting Lowering with the rest of the cell — Here is as much as my camera could capture.

What the heck is this? — This is looking very suspect...no apparent rotation but definitly RFD winds.

It turns out Adam Boggs was directly next to this lowering and has some amazing footage of it. In his footage it didn’t appear to be rotating much either; we’ll call it a Scudnado. It was impressive structure though! Ended up hooking up with Adam on some random county road and we chased the rest of the day convoy style. This was a great chase and the storm had magnificent structure at times!