We are traveling west on I-70 to Limon, CO, which is about 40 miles
away as I type. There is a big supercell over the north side of
Denver we are watching on radar… and Verne Carlson’s video stream at
times. Pretty cool! Other storms south and east of Denver are
forming, but are still in mid 40s dewpoint air. Farther east =
greater moisture and CAPE, so we will probably wait in Limon for
things to become better organized as the activity from southeast of
DEN to COS is rather unorganized right now. More later.
–
Mike Umscheid Photography
http://gallery.underthemeso.com
mesomike@gmail.com
As I type, we are 30 miles south of Oakley, KS with a target of
northeastern Colorado in mind. Earlier this morning, we were thinking
Southwest KS into the OK Panhandle, however, we have decided to
re-target farther north and west given all the mid level cloud cover
with the upper wave across AZ and NM moving out fairly quickly. We
are now playing for upslope/elevated heating generated storms across
northeastern CO. The NAM and RUC suggest fairly aggressive convective
development late this aftn and evening across this area… and upper
tropospheric winds are actually a bit strong across eastern CO
(albeit, mid level winds just a shade lower, but still adequate for
supercells). There is good insolation across the target area with
morning stratus burning off. So we will head to Burlington, CO and
re-evaluate from there… however by that time, we may have a target
storm to chase to our west or northwest. More later.
–
Mike Umscheid Photography
http://gallery.underthemeso.com
mesomike@gmail.com
Kim to Pritchett, CO to Richfield to Hugoton, KS Long-lived supercell with brief tornado
Evan, Jay, and I had one long day. Intercepted the Kim to Pritchett, CO to Richfield, KS and beyond supercell. We observed numerous gustnadoes south of Pritchett, but as significant updrafting was beginning to occur above these dust whirlies. Soon, without much warning at all, a very nice and somewhat tall translucent dust tube extended from a compact dusty debris cloud upwad a good distance. This was no ordinary gustnado. We all three believe this was indeed a legit tornado, ~15 SSE Pritchett, CO at about 6pm MDT. Bookbinder and I got a few pretty good images, which will be posted by tomorrow morning at the latest. After this, the storm spewed out too much outflow, so we tried to blast east a good distance for structure. Some of the dust back in the storm was really opaque. Pretty hairy stuff. When we got to the KS border, we realized that getting gas was moving high on our priority list. We wanted to stay ahead of the storm though on our way to the next large enough town — Hugoton. So we went north on Hwy 27 from Hwy 51 to Richfield. We stopped a mile or so south of where Hwy 27 jogged east to Richfield to photograph incredible green vault color to our west. Beautiful. But we underestimated how close this was to us, and we figured we could get to the east jog in time. We miscalculated. We ate it. Golfball to 2″ diameter hail overtook us 6 miles west of Richfield. I have some spiders on the glass as a result. D’oh! We took Hwy 51 back south with some jaw-dropping structure to our west. Beautiful bell-shaped updraft with some of that vertical striations that most undoubtedly suggest 2.5″+ diameter hail. Then there was the dust. Wow. Inflow dust was just unbelievable. We drove through a couple inflow jets with less than 1/8 mile visbility. We eventually got out ahead of the storm enough on Hwy 56 to get more jaw dropping, menacing structure to the west-northwest with ground-scrapping lowerings/wall cloud. The kicker was the inflow dust jets — two of them streaming into the updraft from different locations and rising into the supercell. It was something I had really never seen before… two separate inflow dust jets going up into the supercell structure. Wow!!! At any rate, we continued to follow this beast watching a left-split race north as the main supercell was moving east. We thought these storms would merge between Hugoton and Liberal, but the left-split continued to race right on by. Our last photography location was west of Liberal with some shelf cloud structure in the waning nautical twilight. Met up with Scott Blair in Liberal for some fantastic McDonalds (sigh) since no other restaurant on Pancake avenue wanted to stay open past 10. Back to Dodge City tonight with more in store on this trip!
We are on our way home, concluding our last photo shoot west of
Liberal of the approaching supercell storm. We followed this thing
all the way from west of Kim, Colorado! However, we really didn’t get
back into a good road network to chase the storm until the Pritchett,
CO area… where we documented numerous gustnadoes. There was a brief
moment where a translucent, tube tornado occurred at the forward flank
of the storm. This was definitely a legitimate tornado, approac 15
SSE of Pritchett, CO at 6pm MDT. Afterwards, the storm became more
outflow dominant, and we followed it to far SW Kansas (Morton
County). We were in “find gas station” mode, and decided that Hugoton
was the best option… The supercell erupted again just west of
Richfield and we photographed one hell of a green looking vault
region.
–
Mike Umscheid Photography
http://gallery.underthemeso.com
mesomike@gmail.com
(Sent by Mike’s Alltel Blackberry smartphone)
Amazing bell shaped supercell structure in Morton County Ks!! Unfortunately it cost me a windshield 6 W of 3
Richfield. Whew!!
(Sent by Mike’s Alltel Blackberry smartphone)
We are driving ahead of the supercell and repositioning to try to get south. Our best south option is the road south to black mesa state park. Kind of frustrating the road network and battling renewed development on the forward flank
(Sent by Mike’s Alltel Blackberry smartphone)
(Sent by Mike’s Alltel Blackberry smartphone)
We are traveling southwest toward Trinidad, CO toward storms
developing against the mountains north and northwest of Trinidad. The
road network will probably not be very kind to us today, so we are
hoping for a little bit of luck in that department. The instability
and shear is excellent today in this area for supercells (even
long-lived tornadic perhaps). Once we get to Trinidad we will
probably have a decent storm to chase. Internet connectivity may be
limited given the sparse population east of Trinidad, so be prepared
for long periods of no updates perhaps.
–
Mike Umscheid Photography
http://gallery.underthemeso.com
mesomike@gmail.com
Looking at forecast upper level winds/heights, current surface
obs/winds and expected pressure falls across central New Mexico… I’m
seeing visions of Trinidad 2001 running through my mind (A day where I
saw my westernmost, highest elevation tornado). High Theta-E will get
pulled back northwestward into the Raton Mesa region. This looks like
an excellent Raton/Trinidad initiation day with storm motions taking
development into Las Animas County or something like that. We may head
southwest from Lamar… perhaps as far southwest as the I-25 corridor.
I think (and hope) the NAM is holding on to the stratus too long today
in southeast CO, hence the surface T and CAPE minimum there… but all
the forcing signals are fantastic for an area downstream of Raton Mesa
into southeast CO.
–
Mike Umscheid Photography
http://gallery.underthemeso.com
mesomike@gmail.com
