Another day, another flood! Waking up in the morning, I didn’t feel as if I would get out to chase, but when I wrapped up the day, I actually ended up going out twice! Faster storm motions, a little bit better shear, but a tad less instability, seemed to indicate a better chance for marginally severe weather but not as great for flood potential. None-the-less, storms again fired in the higher terrain, but this time moved out quickly!
The earlier round sent me out shortly after 1pm. I ultimately screwed up this attempt as I got stuck in traffic, took roads that were clogged, and ultimately never settled on getting under the storm or documenting the potential flooding after the storm. All that basically lead to me being 5 minutes behind the storm. Hail reports, up to an inch in diameter, kept me from documenting the post storm situations, and ultimately lead to me missing out on both. I went home after chasing the storm into Commerce City and watch it weaken as it moved east of town.
Round two was the better of the day. After spending a few hours at home, storms up near Fort Collins laid out a southbound outflow boundary which moved much slower to the south than yesterday’s outflow did moving north. Meanwhile, temperatures had recovered into the 80s behind the early afternoon storms, thus instability had returned and refired storms in the foothills west of Denver.
I didn’t waste any time on this shot as I left the apartment and headed north to intercept the storm. It became severe-warned enroute for wind, but reports of up to penny-sized hail were also coming in. The storm rode the outflow boundary to the east at a fairly slow clip, but it still had enough forward progress to keep it moving.
Below is a series of Composite Reflectivity radar grabs from 7:06-7:24pm MDT
I ended up on I-25, sitting in traffic after I exited I-76 due to the underpass at 84th Avenue being under water. I managed to quickly get myself to 84th where I turned west across the bridge to see a Sheriff Patrol blocking 84th. Behind him was over 2-feet of water, two stranded vehicles, and blocked traffic in both directions. I parked in a pull off on the I-25 south on-ramp and went over to document the event.
After shooting for a while, I took the cop’s advice to seek out some more photo ops down the street. This required me getting back on the highway and taking US-36 over to Pecos. Unfortunately, several car accidents blocked US-36 and kept me tied up for a bit. By the time I reached Pecos, the situations I was after had been taken care of and most of the water had receded. I shot some b-roll video of debris in the streets and swollen roadside ditches.
