High Plains Drifter

(Times in CDT) (photo links in bold)  As I mentioned in my morning forecast post on April 20th, I had quite a tough decision to make regarding a chase target area.  I ultimately optioned for the southern target in the Texas Panhandle based solely on gut intuition.  I just liked the higher CAPE farther south and dryline convergence by late afternoon/early evening, and I knew that if something went up, it would be isolated… perfect for storm photography.

I  departed Dodge City around noon heading south for a target in the east-central Texas Panhandle — around Stinnett, TX.  I kept a good cell data signal all the way to the target area, and I arrived in Spearman around 2:30.  I hung around town here for about a half hour, as it appeared the dryline was really beginning to sharpen-up to my west around Dumas.  I kept my options open, as the best moisture was still just to the southeast of Amarillo with mid to upper 50s dewpoints.  I figured this moisture would continue to advect northwestward to Amarillo and points north of there to where the best convergence appeared to be setting up.  With this thinking in mind, I cheated more west closer to the convergence and I could see some initial small clumping cumulus developing to my west near and north of Dumas.  Other cumulus was developing to the south of me farther away, near the Palo Duro Canyon area.  I sat at this location between Cactus and Spearman for probably a half hour just waiting — figuring I was in a good spot.  As time went on, the cumulus to my west was just not doing anything, and better clumping cumulus was occurring to my south — so I continued south and east to Stinnett, where I sat and waited again for about 20-30 minutes about 5 miled west of town after I refueled and grabbed a bite to eat in town.  By 5pm, I was watching several areas of potential interest for initiation, and ultimately spotted hard towering cu developing well to my west-southwest near Vega, TX.  This was some 90 miles to my southwest.  There was nothing going on at my latitude… so southwest I went.  By the time I reached Hwy 87 at Four Way, the hard towers that prompted my heading this direction…completely evaporated into nothing.  This was frustrating!  I hit a complete low point on this chase right here.  It was after 6pm, and I was getting tired of driving seemingly aimlessly across the Texas Panhandle.  What made things even more frustrating was that storms were now developing way to my south…about 120 miles away to the west of Plainview.  I was so ticked off at this point, I just about said to hell with it and headed back home…   but after looping the radar of these newly developed storms and seeing that they were moving more northly…essentially towards my direction… I decided not to give up.  This was a very good decision.

So south I go once again.  All of this was reminding me very much of my May 9, 2006 chase when I was caught too far north — taking a nearly identical route to get to developing storms well off to my south.  I reached Amarillo and headed east a bit on Hwy 287 before heading back south again, in anticipation of the developing storms being east of I-27 by the time I got down there.  As it turned out, the first storms that developed weakened significantly with new storms developing back west of the interstate again.  D’oh!  Now I am thinking I’m going to be caught too far east because of this move!  Oh well.  At Claude, I continued south, taking me through the Palo Duro Canyon (where I lost my cell data signal).  At 7:45pm or so, it was getting pretty late, so I had to really motor to get south of this storm before good light would wane.  I never did get down there before sunset and here’s why:  Remember those first storms I talked about that diminished as they moved east of the interstate?  Well, they left some incredible skyscape views with picturesque virga showers amidst the terrain.  After driving through the canyon, I decided I need to get a photo of these remnant virga showers/orphan anvils during the photographer’s "golden hour" at sunset with the canyon landscape — thus after driving south, I turned around on Hwy 207 and went back north a few miles through the canyon.  I’m glad I did.

As the sun got lower on the horizon, the old orphan anvil with remnant virga lit up in beautiful hues of violet, pink, and orange.  The rugged terrain of the canyon landscape also became a brilliant hue of deep, burnt orange and red.  Here are a few vertical landscape photos (1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5) showing the wonderful colors of the canyon landscape as well as the decaying storm’s leftover virga shower.  Not a single other chaser was around, not even another car passed by this entire time I photographed here.  It is a moment in storm chasing/photography I will absolutely cherish.  I think it takes extreme luck and/or a lot of hard work to get these kind of beautiful skyscapes amidst such colorful and dynamic landscape.  In my case, I consider it work, because I tried for these images after I realized the potential I had about 30 minutes prior (prompting me to turn around and go back into the canyon when other chasers would try to get out of the canyon as quick as they could!  The fine-art photography love I have has certainly changed the way I chase storms.

The 10 or 15 minute window I had with these colors in the canyon had come…and gone.  But I forever have it captured in photography.  After that, I was completely thrilled with the outcome of my chase — no supercell, no tornado, yet very successful from a photography standpoint.  I could have left and gone back home happy with just that 10-15 minutes during the "golden hour".  Little did I know what I had in store for me after sunset:

With my interest in long-exposure photography, I decided that even though the sun had set, I still had enough light for the next hour or so for some interesting shots, should the storms to my immediate southwest hold together.  I turned around and headed back south on Hwy 207…then west towards the storm near Happy at around 8:30pm. Here is a look at the storm at around 8:50pm looking west.  I then found a spot along Ranch #1075 along the county line of Randall and Swisher about 5 miles east of Happy.  From this spot, I sat and photographed one of the most amazing LP supercell updrafts I’ve photographed to date.  Against the clear twilight sky, this storm, while small, stood tall...and the periodic intracloud lightning illuminated structure just enough to highlight the beauty of this storm.  The lightning illumination is what made these images so striking.  I had my Nikon D200 set up in full manual mode at about 4sec exposure and f/3.5 aperture… although this aperture was too wide open/fast for the brightest lightning within this updraft… but at the same time, I had to have a fast aperture to mitigate motion blur of the storm itself.  It was a fine balancing act between aperture and ISO sensitivity to keep shutter speed at 6 seconds or less.  The motion blur of the storm was too much if I kept the shutter open longer than about 6 seconds.  But it just kept getting better:

Before I knew it, Venus was making an appearance to the left of the southern edge of the updraft and followed soon by the crescent moon amidst the semi transparent southern edge anvil of this LP storm.  I simply couldn’t believe what I was witnessing/photographing!  LP supercell, Venus, and the crescent moon all in one shot!!  1 | 2 | 3 | 4  Some clouds from the south were invading and the moon and Venus would eventually become hidden once again.  As darkness was winning out, I had to increase my ISO to about 640 in order to keep a shutter speed at 6 seconds or less.  The storm base was perfect with a lowered area and an inflow tail on the south side.  The updraft base area was becoming more laminar in appearance due to a more stable surface layer, and after about this time, the light was getting too low for any reasonable photos under a 6 second exposure.  Shortly after this time, I called it a chase and began my trek back north towards Dodge City.  From a pure photography standpoint, this was definitely one of the top 3 or 4 chases since I began digital SLR photography in 2005.

Photo Gallery:

http://www.underthemeso.com/gallery2/stormchase/chase07/2007apr20/

Mike Umscheid

(times in CDT). (bold links are photos)  Well, as fun as the day before’s chase was, this chase was equally frustrating.   I began the morning in Sterling, CO — after staying the night with Tony and his friends in a fairly nice Best Western suite.  I awoke around 8am or so and noticed after looking at a few things that there might be a really interesting play near the center of the ejecting upper low over southeastern or east central Colorado.  I figured storms (with perhaps a "cold-core" tornado threat?) would get going shortly after noon or so, and I figured I needed to get down perhaps as far south as Lamar-Eads.  So I parted ways with Tony and his group and drove south.  I should note that one of the big reasons why I decided to head towards the center of the upper low/cold pocket aloft was that east of this area… in southwestern Nebraska and western Kansas…the atmosphere was completely hosed from a pretty large overnight MCS, which really impacted potential instability for the afternoon.  Both the NAM and RUC models suggested much lower CAPE (instability) in these areas, which was the primary area of interest a few days out.

So I headed south to I-70 and continued south to Eads.  Per radar, there was already showery activity developing along the Front Range, which would only continue to develop eastward through the day.  Most of my interest was along an eastward extending arm of showers moving over the Raton Mesa area east and northeast of Trinidad.  The RUC and NAM were both indicating a small area of enhanced low level CAPE by early afternoon north of the Lamar-La Junta area at the nose of a developing thermal ridge.  There was also an axis of horizontal wind shear at the surface (source of vertical vorticity) north of La Junta which would aid in any weak tornado development.  These were the things running through my mind as to why I should consider chasing this area (while no one else really did).  As I approached Eads, I monitored newly developed storms to my southwest.  I filled up gas in Eads and headed southwest from there to kind of get in this area.  There was a little bit of heating (per visible satellite) between this stuff and the other showers farther southwest.  By 1:30pm, There were two areas of interest on radar, one northwest of Ordway and the other just south of La Junta, as I continued southwest on CO96. 

The storm near Ordway was moving northwest and was more difficult to reach than the other storm near La Junta.  The storm northwest of Ordway had a suspicious, very low cloud base that I could barely see on the horizon.  I really wish I was closer, because at times, I was seeing some interesting lowerings and possibly a funnel.  I never did get any photos though.  Eventually, I went north a few miles north of Ordway and positioned myself between the two areas of activity, but there just wasn’t a whole lot of structure to these storms… and in fact the southern storms were taking on more of an outflow dominant type structure.  So, I gave this area a try, and it didn’t "perform", so back east I went to get in position of more isolated storms.  A somewhat interesting small storm developed on the southeast tail of this action to the southwest of Haswell, and I busted east and northeast to get ahead of it.  I did stop for a little bit to get a few photos (1 and 2), but this storm never really developed anymore than what was photographed here, so in anticipation of further development of storms to the northeast as the dry intrusion worked northeast… it was time to keep on driving north.

Driving, and driving, and driving was the story of this chase.  As you can see from the radar and GPS images, all I was doing was driving for the most part during much of the late afternoon and early evening…from Eads, Colorado to Oakley, KS and eventually up to east of McCook, NE.  All the storms were visually displeasing from a photographic standpoint, so I didn’t take any photos at all during this stretch until I approached Nebraska.  I drove north from Oakley in hopes the storms to my west would develop into something interesting, but it would really never happen.  Meahwhile, 40 miles east of where I started the day in Sterling, there were at least a couple weak, brief tornadoes that were documented by Al Pietrycha.  That didn’t exactly make me happy… but oh well, what can you do.  I finally made it far enough north to photograph some decent storm structure just prior to crossing into Nebraska north of Oberlin, KS (1 and 2).  This would be about it though.  To top off this "wonderful" chase, listening to the KU basketball game vs. UCLA was just pouring salt on an open wound.  I made it as far northeast as here before I took a break and turned around to head back home.  After I got a bite to eat in Oberlin I headed home.  I did stop once though to photograph distant lightning in the Cb to the north which was kind of fun.  Photos of lightning illuminated Cbs:  1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Photo Gallery:

http://www.underthemeso.com/gallery2/stormchase/chase07/2007mar24/

Mike Umscheid

(times in MDT). (bold links are photos).  This was a pretty fun chase.  I decided to chase Northeast Colorado since it looked like moist upslope flow would help sustain organized storms in this area by early to mid evening.  I left Dodge City during the late morning hours and arrived in Limon around 1:30pm.  There were already some weak storms going up over the geographically favored area of the Palmer Divide near Monument.  After some food and a fill-up, I continued northwest to Agate where I headed west on unpaved roads to get a little closer to this area of developing storms along the "urban corridor".  The storms took their time developing, and I sat at this location west of Agate for upwards of an hour.  Finally, as the activity was moving more to the northeast, a weak storm became more organized, and I continued west then north after this.  I stopped for a little bit to photograph the marginal structure of this storm, but it did reveal a picturesque precipitation shaft (2) to the west.  On approach to I-70, the storm was becoming a bit less interesting structurally, and the radar signature was also on the demise it had appeared.  I continued southeast to Deer Trail where I met up with Tony Laubach and his chase friends.  We sat there in Deer Trail watching trashy looking storms to out west and north.  We struggled for a bit as to what our next move would be, but ultimately decided to head north and east after newly developed poor-looking storms.

So the chase was on… well sort of.  Around 6pm, we headed north from Last Chance to intercept the best-looking storms on radar near Wiggins.  At around 6:30pm, we reached Brush, and it was at this point that Tony (with his group) and I would diverge…as they were more interested in heading east towards better moisture, whereas I was more interested in the best looking storm closest to our location — which was the storm out near Wiggins.  There was indications that the storm to the west was getting just a bit better structure with an elongated "shelf-cloud" looking structure to the west-southwest.  I headed west on I-76 to get closer to this storm.  It didn’t take long to get in a decent position ahead of this developing storm, and I then headed south half-way between Fort Morgan and Brush.  I stopped at a location about a mile and a half south of the interstate and setup for some photography. 

The storm was really intensifying rapidly with vastly improved structure. (radar).  I did call Tony to let him know of what I was seeing and strongly suggesting they turn around and re-consider this storm.  They did. One thing to note was the dewpoint at Akron to the east… it had increased to 47°F after being in the upper 30s to near 40 most of the day.  The area where this storm was developing was finally seeing some better moisture just after sunset.  The storm revealed some well-organized structure with a faint horse-shoe updraft base.  I really liked the mid-level inflow bands developing in the inflow region of the storm.  As the storm was moving east, I decided to re-position myself to the northeast side of Brush.  A severe thunderstorm warning was issued and golfball size hail was reported on the north side of Fort Morgan.  Radar showed some supercell structure with a decent weak-echo region.  I reached my next stopping location for photos just northeast of Brush, and this is where I met back up with Tony and co.  It was a very nice looking fairly high-based storm.  (radar).  As darkness prevailed, the storm showed very nice striated banding structure, which was very photogenic along with the lightning.  Here are links to a few photos from this location:  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

The storm approached too close once again, and it was time to move northeast.   Unfortunately, in the process, the storm was weakening and was losing its structure.  I stopped briefly one more time for additional lightning photos, but there was too much rain to get out and setup for any shots.  Shortly thereafter, we called it a chase and headed northeast to Sterling for the night.  (radar)  This was my first real decent severe storm structure chase of 2007, and it was good to enjoy it with Tony and his friends! 

Photo Gallery:

http://www.underthemeso.com/gallery2/stormchase/chase07/2007mar23/

Mike Umscheid