High Plains Drifter

(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