High Plains Drifter

I was able to chase close to home on Friday, 7/31 since I was on midnight shifts.  It was another intriguing northwest flow setup across western Kansas as a cold front was pushing into the region with pretty decent low level moisture (dewpoints in the lower 60s) ahead of it.  I wasn’t planning on chasing because I originally thought the best storms would be 2 hours or more from Dodge City, which is just about my limit for a midnight shift.  When I saw a storm forming in Gove County after I woke up from a nap at about 6:30pm, I decided that this was a chaseable storm since it would essentially be moving in the direction of Dodge City.  So I left at around 7:00pm or so for Cimarron and then north toward Dighton.  I got a good view of the updraft region of the storm north of Dighton and I followed some farm roads east of Hwy 23 northeast of Dighton.  I then inched north toward Hwy 4 near Shields closer to the updraft region.  I sat at a spot just a mile north of Hwy 4 just northeast of Shields and photographed a fairly nice structured supercell updraft with a rather circular “mothership” appearance.  Rotation at cloud base was quite obvious, but rather broad I thought.  Since this was a northwest flow environment and rather high bases typical of western Kansas storms, I wasn’t really giving much thought to a substantial tornado threat, and I concentrated my effort on structure.  Little did I know that another storm chaser closer in was observing some weak, brief funnels and even a tornado or two (Roger Hill/Silver Lining Tours) way back in the rain-wrapped occluded area of the supercell to my north.  I continued photographing the structure of the storm along Hwy 4 toward Utica… and around 9:10pm or so, I observed a fairly concentrated dust plume in the RFD region of the supercell.  I believe this was a focused RFD surge causing dust to be kicked up beneath it, because at cloud base the rotation was extremely broad and not overly intense.  Nevertheless, RFD surges like this are an instigator to tornadogenesis many times, and I watched this closely with quite a bit of interest.  I was losing the structure from this vantage point and I drifted closer to Utica at around 9:30pm to photograph a wonderful “mothership” striated updraft structure to my west-northwest.  Around this time, Roger Hill reported a truncated narrow cone shaped tornado in the occluded area of the storm.  I believe I photographed this feature at 9:28pm.  I then drifted south on a farm road south of Utica…which met up with Hwy 96… and photographed the storm one last time at around 9:37pm.  Coincidentally, this was the time Roger also reported another brief tornado to his north.  I am thinking Roger was not far from me on this same road just north of me given his SpotterNetwork report.  I think I have evidence of his slanted, truncated “pencil” shaped tornado at 9:37pm looking north-northeast. After this, I drove back to Dodge City, arriving back home shortly after 11:00pm, in time for work at midnight.

I have contrast-enhanced some of my images to reveal some of these likely small, rather short-lived tornadoes, which are described below.

Below is a hyper contrast-enhanced image at 8:30pm looking north with the Shields, KS grain elevator on the horizon.  This contrast-enhanced image reveals a fairly well-defined funnel cloud amidst the precipitation core extending halfway to the ground from cloud base from this point of view:

Below is a contrast-enhanced image at 9:28pm looking to the west-northwest from a location along Hwy 4 about a mile or so west of Utica, KS.  This shows a fairly convincing truncated cone-shaped funnel extending about 2/3 of the way to the ground:

Below are two contrast-enhanced images about 9 minutes after the previous image above.  This was shot looking north-northeast in the direction of Utica, KS from a location along an unpaved county road about 6 miles or so south of Hwy 4.  These were shot at around 9:37pm:

11 seconds after the previous image:

…The Great Bend LP Supercell…

My target from Dodge City was pretty much anywhere along a line from roughly Pratt to Larned to Hays. First I was favoring the northern end of this line, then I began to favor the southern end of this line right as I was about to leave Dodge City at about 3pm… but in the end, I ultimately decided to just play the middle — Larned. I arrived in Larned to find some towering cumulus growth from my west-southwest to north-northwest. I just decided to hang out here on the outskirts of town to watch things evolve. I called my friend Robin Lorenson who was going to be out chasing as well… she started out in Salina. Her target was Great Bend, so we were not far from each other. We just decided that since we were so close we should just chase together. We met up on Hwy 19 about 7 miles east of Larned. At the time I was most interested in the small cell trying to develop just to our northwest. We also watched with interest the aggressive cumulus congestus development to our southeast which would become the Kingman supercell. We sat at this spot for some time watching our small shower struggle against some drier air. The best pooling of upper 60s to near 70 dewpoints was farther north. A storm rapidly took nice shape on radar and we could pick out the base in the distant north. This would become our target storm so we headed north for the intercept. We took Hwy 56 northeast to Pawnee Rock then north on county roads from that point on. We stopped a couple times north of Pawnee Rock once we got a good view of the structure of this storm. It was a beautiful LP supercell! Our second stopping point along this county road was a beautiful view from atop a hill. The storm had a nice flared base, a small wall cloud, broiling convection atop this, and a wonderful backsheared anvil.

From this point on, Robin and I chased separately as she headed north to photograph from closer in while I continued my structure chasing from the south. I followed it south and east through the Great Bend Airport area south to the Stafford County line until the storm ultimately died a rapid death around sunset. What a great way to conclude my 3-day chase weekend!!

Sunday, July 19th was another very successful day of high plains storm photography.  It wasn’t a day with a long-lived isolated supercell, but that wasn’t needed Sunday.  I came away with at least a couple of images that will certainly make a nice addition to my 2009 storm portfolio — including one special lightning shot that will be titled “Right Between the Ears” (image number 2 below) — a unique image of a tall, single, branched lightning flash in the distance amidst a narrow hail core composed perfectly between the two small isolated mounds that make up “Rabbit Ear Mountain” to the north of Clayton, NM.  I actually  managed to get two brilliant cloud-to-ground daytime flashes with Rabbit Ear Mountain in the frame.

After this, storms became more organized with better structure, and I drove northwest about 10 miles or so on Hwy 64 and watched some real interesting storm structure develop.  I then headed south of Clayton on Hwy 402 — a highway I had now become familiar with these past couple days — as a well-rounded circular structured storm updraft developed just to my west.  I needed to get east ahead of this, and I did so taking Hwy 102 which turned into Ranch 808 as it crossed into Texas west of Dalhart.  I photographed some really close cloud-to-ground flashes, both of which were a bit over-exposed unfortunately, before I ended the chase.  Images from this chase are below.

…Long-lived picturesque LP-ish supercell from northeast of Clayton, NM to northwest of Clovis, NM…

My target was Clayton, NM area, and I arrived there around Noon CDT eager to have some mexican food at the Eklund Saloon — only arriving to find out that the Eklund is closed… at least temporarily according to the signage on the doors.  Lets hope that it is just temporary.  Anyway, after a lunch at another restaurant, I drifted north of town to watch some cumulus development.  I was keying in on the area north of Clayton where the best surface convregence was.  I drove back into town to get some gas and noticed on SpotterNetwork that Roger Hill and Silver Lining Tours (SLT) was pulling into town.  I saw them pull into the Pizza Hut so I went in there to say hey to Roger briefly, then I was on my way again.  I went back to the same spot… a nice overlook on Hwy 370 north of Clayton by a few miles.  The first decent storm to develop went up east of me — to the southeast of Boise City, so I decided to at least hedge my bets east… keeping a close eye to my north still, which was where I was actually a little more interested based on surface obs.  Sure enough, as I begin driving out of Clayton on Hwy 56 to the northeast, an updraft began to explode to my north.  I wanted to watch this, so I peeled off Hwy 56 on a farm road in extreme southwest Cimarron County, OK between Felt, OK and Clayton, NM.  The new storm had a beautiful pancake anvil and after an initial split, began to really develop nicely into a formidable rotating soda can updraft!  I watched this thing drift south toward me, but eventually headed south to stay ahead of this.

Another storm was developing east of me…a storm between the one I was on looking north and the southeast of Boise City storm.  This had a beautiful updraft with long beaver tail on the north side and even a lowered feature beneath the base.   I continued south to Ranch 808 where I decided to head west.  In this mid-upper level flow environment, I usually do not want to be east of the storm at all… it’s better to be due south or southwest of the updraft area.  So I decided to head west into New Mexico to Hwy 402.  The drive along Hwy 402 was very nice with a great view of the backside broiling convection looking to the east-southeast at the supercell.  I finally made it to Nara Visa and Hwy 54 where I continued southwest.  I leap-frogged Roger Hill again along Hwy 54… the first time was up when the storm first developed east of Clayton.  I had lost data connection for some time while on Hwy 54 including going through Logan until I got closer to I-40.  As the storm approached I-40, it was looking very nice visually — perhaps the strongest the storm ever got was when it was northeast of San Jon on approach to I-40.  I continued south on Hwy 39 stopping a couple times to photograph the structure.  It had some very nice RFD occlusions, but the storm was high-based with no tornado threat (despite the one tornado warning Albequerque issued).  One of the stopping locations was atop San Jon Hill, which is where Roger Hill and SLT pulled up.  This was an excellent view overlooking some small canyon landscape carved out by one of the tributaries of the Canadian River — and the supercell storm approaching!  The structure, though by this time, was beginning to wane unfortunately.  Nevertheless, it was a beautiful spot to photograph a storm from, and it was nice to share this scene with Roger and his chase tour guests.

So I continued south on state routes as the storm was now moving more and more to the southwest with time.  It was starting to get dark, so I wanted to get closer to Clovis where my hotel reservation was.  I reached a point about 15 miles north of Clovis with the storm still to my northwest…wanting to get closer to the updraft one last time.  As I was doing so, about a mile into my west jog off of Hwy 209, the underbelly of the storm was illuminated a brilliant pink… as if a spotlight was shining on the storm from below.  This was extremely vivid, and I don’t recall seeing anything quite like this before.  I scrambled to get my D3 onto the tripod because I knew this color wasn’t going to last.  I got the shot!  It was an absolutely breathtaking scene.  The pink was just incredible on the weakening storm updraft to the west-northwest!!  I stayed there for a little while longer as some of the color lingered… and I had the D200 on the tripod now to photograph some lightning.  I managed to get a couple CG’s and one nice crawler.  What a way to finish off an amazing chase day!!  Below are 10 images from the chase:

…Highly photogenic & vivid lightning outside of Lipscomb, Texas…

at 5:45pm, I really had no idea I would be having probably my finest lightning photography shoot of the year in the next 3 to 4 hours — but that’s what happened.  I got home from work at a quarter after 4 and took a nap for almost an hour and a half!  I woke up, looked at the radar and noticed that a decent storm had formed west of Liberal… moving slowly east.  I figured that since the action was likely going to stay out of the Dodge City forecast area, it was probably okay to skip town since they wouldn’t need extra help at work.  So at 6pm, I took off.  It was another one of these totally spontaneous, impromtu chases with no pre-planning whatsoever.  I just looked at the radar and said “I’m gonna chase this”, and left.  I was originally thinking about going down to Englewood and meet the storms as they moved closer to there, but they were not moving as fast as I thought… so instead of going due south to Englewood, I drove southwest to Meade…then south from there into the Oklahoma Panhandle.  The first storm that developed, which prompted me to go on this chase, ultimately died, but I figured more would form based on short-term model signals and the decent environment with marginal wind shear and pretty good instability.  Another storm formed farther south…along the OK-TX Panhandle border near the town of Booker, TX.  I drove south from Hwy 270 continuing south on Hwy 23 to Booker.  I had to punch the core, but there wasn’t much to it other than a lot of rain and some gusty north winds.  It didn’t take long to get to the other side of this fairly small storm.  I stopped briefly to try to shoot some structure from the southwest side looking northeast… but the structure wasn’t all that great.  The wind was, though, gusting to near 60 mph at times from the north.  It was a chore to keep hold the car door open when I was getting my gear out to shoot.  I went south further to Ranch 3260 and followed it east.  At this point, I wasn’t overly encouraged by the structure of this storm.  Soon, however, as I approached Hwy 305 at Lipscomb, I noticed some increased development in the front updraft flank of the storm.  I wanted to find a good high spot to pull off and just observe things for awhile.  I did this just east of Lipscomb on a paved county road (County Road T) about a mile or two east of town.  For the next hour, at this same location, I watched a storm develop quite nice updraft structure… only to eventually go on to put on a spectacular and mesmorizing cloud-to-ground lightning show that I would photograph with the lightning trigger.  I went from thinking that this was a stupid evening driving exercise in futility — to damn glad I decided to make this run — in a span of about 20 minutes!  It was so much fun to just sit there and photograph this storm and the associated lightning from the same spot.  Below are 9 images from this awesome one-hour moment in time:

…Long-lived severe storm complex with beautiful striated updraft/shelf cloud structures — from the Palmer Divide to Oakley, Kansas…

I must say, I was extremely pleased with how this chase turned out.  I had very little choice other than to chase as close to home (Dodge City) as possible, seeing as I had to start day shift early the next morning.  I began this chase in Sidney, NE with a target of the Palmer Divide (around and south of Limon, CO) in mind.  Water vapor satellite was showing a subtle jet streak/mid level moist band moving into western Colorado, timed to come out into the adjacent high plains by afternoon.  Moisture was still very good across eastern Colorado to the east of the Palmer Divide with dewpoints in the lower to mid 60s across far eastern Colorado, so once storms reached this moisture/high CAPE, they should thrive…given the marginal wind shear.  By the time I reached Limon, I already noticed decent towers developing over the Palmer Divide, so I drove southwest on Highway 24 — “the highway to Palmer storms”.  I drove as far southwest as Simla before I decided to hang out on a farm road.  It’s so green out there.  The landscape is just beautifu on the Palmer with wonderful wildflower growth and green rolling hills.  I would love to live out here!!  Anyway, as a young storm started to grow to my west, I ventured southwest to Calhan where I then began my journey on farm roads south toward Hwy 94.  The incipient storm was small and had some shape to it with a precipitation core separated from the updraft area.  Eventually, though, numerous other storms developed to the south and southeast of this initial storm and it quickly became a mess.  All this activity was still somewhat displaced from the good moisture, so I figured I had to give it some time to sort itself out.  Meantime, I was noticing aggressive Cb growth well to my northeast…to the northeast of Limon, and I gave it some thought to just totally abort the Palmer Divide mess and reposition to the northeast.  The easternmost storm of the Palmer mess was actually a pretty little storm with a stout, compact precipitation core coming straight down out of the center of the smallish Cb.  I took a couple photos of this.

An elongated base was just to my south…just south of Hwy 94 from just south of Yoder to south of Punkin Center.  This was slowly moving north toward the highway, so my thought was just to get to Hwy 71 (Punkin Center).  Before I did that, though, I drifted south about a mile or so to try and photograph some of the intense lightning that was barraging the location behind me back to the west.  I tried to get out of the rain with some luck and captured a couple daytime CG’s with the lightning trigger.  All of a sudden, this storm rapidly gained strength right in front of me to the west and northwest.  I got back to Hwy 94 then blasted east to Hwy 71 where I went south.  This began the real chase!  My first stopping location was about 6 miles south of Punkin Center where I photographed a nice updraft structure with the telltale jagged, scalloping appearance that is typical of strong Colorado storms.  I wanted to get east to stay ahead of this, so I started taking more dirt farm roads east and north to Karval.  Along the way, this storm continued to organize nicely, eventually spewing out an ominous white scud cloud against the dark mass behind it.  Excellent contrast!!  I got one image of this massive white scud cloud against the dark storm behind it…complete with a cluster of cows in the desolate pasture.  One of my memorable scenes of this chase.  Another one shortly after that was a high-contrast slanted scud cloud nosing down at an angle above a distant farmstead — the high contrast scenes I’m after!

I continued to take this road east out of Karval, and at this time I’m without internet data, so I wasn’t providing any updates on my Chase Mode page.  The storm was at its strongest near Karval in southern Lincoln County, and the structure was rather impressive given the marginal mid-upper level flow situation.  The storm was really beginning to accelerate as it was becoming outflow dominant, so I couldn’t stop long to shoot the storm.  I continued to drive east and south on farm roads all the way to due south of Wild Horse (by about 12 miles or so).  The storm behind me by this point became so encompassed with dust it was not worth photographing anymore.  So now what to do?  I noticed the next possible development along this outflow surge to my northwest.  The updraft structure was looking a bit more impressive with striated banding, so this was the next one to chase.  I then followed farm roads east and north to Highway 287 to the south of Kit Carson.  Along the way, I photographed this new storm updraft at a couple different instances.  Soon, this storm began to create a big outflow surge complete with widespread blowing dust — it was now a chore just to stay ahead of the surging dust — and I did this all the way east until I got to Cheyenne Wells taking dirt farm roads the whole way.  I finally got back to paved roads at Hwy 385 with the gust front barrelling toward me.  I did not make it into Cheyenne Wells before the dust.  I shot a few images of the surging dust coming toward the highway before I became involved with the dust.  Visibility at the front of the dust was less than a half mile, and briefly just a couple tens of feet!  I estimated 55 to 60mph winds or so at my location there near the intersection of Hwy 40 and 385 just outside of Cheyenne Wells.  Now to get back east.

I had to blast east on Hwy 40 to get in front of the storm updraft/shelf cloud again where the good images were to be found.  It was a chore.  I followed an 18-wheeler into Kansas from Cheyenne Wells, which was swerving against the 50 mph gusts.  Needless to say, I kept my distance!  I didn’t get ahead of the gust front again until I got to Weskan, KS…and it wasn’t until Sharon Springs when I got a good glimpse at the beautiful high-based multi-tiered shelf cloud.  This was one of the more photogenic shelf clouds I’ve photographed I think.  The striations were very crisp, clean, and highly photogenic.  At times, there were individual eddies along the gust front that bulged out in spots which really improved the structure.  This was really cool!  I continued to photograph this shelf cloud, now that I was far enough ahead of it…from Wallace to Winona to Monument along Hwy 40.  I had to be careful, though, because my fuel needle was precariously close to “E”, but I knew I could make it to Oakley.  Man what a beautiful shelf cloud in the golden hour light!  At Oakley, it finally got dark enough and I was satisfied enough with this chase to just end it right there and begin my trek back to Dodge City.  All in all, for a storm that really wasn’t a supercell, this was another fine day of storm photography on the High Plains of Colorado!  Here are some images from this chase:

After waiting patiently all afternoon along highway 26 in Goshen County, WY, I intercepted 3 severe storms that were briefly marginal supercellular in structure that first initiated off the mountains west of I-25 early in the evening.  The first storm was west of I-25 to the northwest of Chugwater, WY.  I managed to get a couple good cloud-to-ground images with the storm’s updraft using the lightning trigger.  I sat at a parking area along the interstate for a good half hour or so watching this storm approach.  This storm weakened and another more formidable severe storm/marginal supercell formed to the southeast of this one near Chugwater.  I took the desolate highway 313 east, which ended up being a perfect road for this storm intercept as it was basically following me down the road.  A classic, high-contrast rain-foot developed at the southern edge of the precipitation core near the updraft/downdraft interface.  The sounds and smells to go along with the sights of this storm.  This was the reason I took this trip!!  This storm also waned, but yet a third storm with some supercell structure formed southeast of this one… to the west and northwest of LaGrange (this is the area where Vortex-2 intercepted the long-lived tornado back on June 5th).  At sunset, the blues, oranges, and violets were vivid.  Fantastic color.   I continued to photograph this storm after dark as it rolled east into Nebraska to the northwest of Harrisburg.  Below is a sample of images from this chase:

My original target on July 10th was Cheyenne, WY in anticipation of late afternoon storm development off the Laramie Mountains.  As it turned out, I ended up chasing non-mountain generated thunderstorms, and eventually chased a storm rather far from my original target.  I sat in Cheyenne for much of the early/mid afternoon, however initial congested cumulus clouds were not doing much, and was actually starting to think I was too far south being in Cheyenne.  There were two areas that caught my attention:  1) heavily congested cumulus field to my northeast, way up near Harrison, Nebraska and 2) some towers forming west and northwest of Wheatland, WY (near Laramie Peak).  I blasted north on I-80 to Wheatland then took a scenic road east to Ft. Laramie along Hwy 26.  An impressive Cb formed to my northeast as I approached Ft. Laramie, and given the lack of convective embryos back to my west toward the mountains, I made the decision to go after a sure thing:  A rapidly developing storm to my northeast.  Given the road network, I wouldn’t be able to make an intercept of this storm until I got north of Mitchell-Scottsbluff.

I took Hwy 29 north about 25 miles with a good view of the Cb right up the road.  I stopped once for photos along this highway.  I then headed east to jump on Hwy 71.  The storm was to my northwest about 10-20 miles away, and it was moving southeast toward me.  I barely made it to a farm road grid west and southwest of Hemingford.  I thought I was in good shape — getting into a pretty good position with this storm, however once I got into a decent position, the storm rapidly declined in intensity.  The storm had split earlier on (supercell processes at work), and the left member of the split moved northeast away from me.  As it turned out, the left member dominated, and the right member (the one I was chasing) died.  This is opposite what usually happens, however the local wind shear profile in this area had either a straight-line hodograph or slightly counter-clockwise looped hodograph in the low-mid levels — which is a little more unusual as low-mid level hodograph shapes for typical supercells tend to have a clockwise curvature to it.  After my storm died (the right member), I drove north along Hwy 2 to photograph the backside of the severe left-mover supercell which went through Chadron.  It began to get dark as I neared Chadron and the storm was also beginning to die, so I ended the chase here.  Below are a few images from this chase:

This was a bust.  No storms developed in the target area.  I actually had two target areas, and even the secondary target area failed to produce a supercell storm… so I’m really not all that disappointed.  My primary target was the slowly moving front across Central Nebraska.  A couple versions of the NAM and even RUC models hinted at possible convective initiation along the boundary in central Nebraska, and per model soundings, if surface temperatures reached 95 degrees up along this front, there would be a shot.  Well, the warmest temperatures I saw on obs as well as per my car’s thermometer, the temperature in the vicinity of maximum convergence along the front never got much above 91 or 92.  The mid level temperatures were simply too warm.  When the cumulus looked at flat as they did for so late in the afternoon, I knew I was in trouble, and it would take a miracle for something to grow into substantial, hard towers and even further into a storm.  The cumulus field did become a little agitated by 5:30 to 6:30pm where I was sitting at southeast of Minden, Nebraska, but it never got beyond that point.  At 7:30pm, I called it quits and headed west toward McCook to set up for Day-2.  Below is one photo I did take of some high level virga that crossed the area around sunset: