 |
Up to this point, I had never chased a supercell in real upslope conditions, so I was finally able to witness the magic that several other chasers had seen and marveled about. I wasn't expecting the convection to organize into supercells this day until it moved further off of the terrain, so while in Last Chance I heard of a SVR storm w/2" hail near Denver which convinced me to shoot west 40 miles or so and check it out. Shortly after departing, the warning was upgraded to a TOR warning. This was the view south of Last Chance as TCu cycled along a zonal sfc boundary. |
| While heading west on HWY 36, the storm of interest clearly had a wall cloud in place, but later diminished. I pulled over about 8 miles NNE of Bennett at 1604 MDT and began observing how the supercell's base had evolved in a span of about 15 minutes. The wet RFD cut is also noteworthy. |  |
 |
The time is now 1612 MDT and the supercell is wasting no time in putting on a show. Upon reviewing the timelapse of this, the updraft base had great rotation but the wall cloud was not exhibiting much at all...at least for the time being. |
| I observed a gustnado about 1 mile to my south that may have triggered a false tornado report, but the main area of interest was just to my west here at 1623 MDT where low-level rotation was developing above a plume of non-rotating dirt. The south road I'm on here would take me into the wet RFD core, so I turned around to head back to the north and later east. |  |
 |
Now back ahead of the action at 1636 MDT and looking west at the primary wall cloud. Rotation was very evident here and just to my WSW. |
| About a minute later, two separate dirt whirls developed beneath the rotating wall clouds! This image doesn't show the northern (rightmost) one very well, but both were actual tornadoes and not gustnadoes. |  |
 |
A zoomed view of the larger circulation revealing the depth and breadth of the debris. |
| Now heading south to get to another east road, this was one of several gustnadoes that spun up along approaching shelf cloud. One of these sampled my car, but the lighting in the video doesn't reveal it well. |  |
 |
A tornado may have still been in progress on the opposite side of this shelf close to the cyclonic shear, but overall the supercell was taking on a serious outflow look to it more and more. Time is 1656 MDT. |
| Just a nice photo opportunity of the wheat field and the trailing shelf cloud/cold pool debris. |  |
 |
Yes, this storm has really gone outflow dominant. Outbound winds had already raced out ahead of the shelf cloud by this point! Time is 1709 MDT. |
|
Certainly
a case where the bark is bigger than the bite as winds gusted to maybe
40 knots with light rain afterwards. Decided to get a motel for the
night in Sterling, CO while avoiding a drive through this mess.
|
 |
 |
On the way to Sterling, a TOR warning was issued for a rather linear mess just to my west near the 115 mile marker on I-76. I pulled off at the Sterling exit near a gas station and saw an ominous lowering to my NW...roughly where the TVS was being indicated per the NWS. |
| I had an intense gustnado pass just up the road while the wall cloud (couldn't discern rotation) remained to my north in Sterling. Sure enough, damage was reported in the city but I never thought it was a real tornado until the next morning when the Denver news was showing some local's video of the tornado. |  |
| Back to Chase Logs |
All
photos copyright © Matt Ziebell
|