Never turn your back on the DCVZ! Lesson learned today when reports of 6 tornadoes including an F-2 in Elbert County, Colorado are everywhere! None-the-less, a fun outing to be had today! Dania Walker met me on campus after my exam and we took off for Southern Wyoming. Because I got out of my exam after 2, that limited my trip time, however, we intercepted several SEVERE WARNED storms, one which produced a tornado while we were sitting in a massive barrage of 2 inch diameter hail. Another chaser informed us of this brief touchdown after the hail passed over us. A quick and fun trip up north to kick off what should be an insane week of chasing all over the place!
Dania Walker, met me on campus as I finished my Meso-Meteorology exam (which oddly enough, a part of the exam was an evaluation of the convective potential for this day). We filled up and took off, heading north on I-25 to Cheyenne. We arrived shortly after 4:30, stopping at the Flying J Truck Stop for a quick look at data. By this time, we were heading reports of a good sized storm well off to our north, but since my exam wasn’t finished til after 2, I ended up missing out on that.
Anywoo, storms were beginning to fire south of us in Colorado, so we left the truck stop and headed a few miles east on I-80, jumping off to gaze at the towers going up to our south. We intercepted the first storm a few miles south of Cheyenne, following it back northward along Hwy 85 as it was SEVERE WARNED for hail that had gown quickly from pea-sized to quarter-sized. We bailed on the storm when it continued north into areas where roads weren’t going to take us.
Another developing storm on its heals looked impressive. I made a call to Doug Kiesling to get a radar interpretation and made the choice based upon his info to intercept that storm. We followed old tracks along Hwy 85, this time diving about 5 miles back into Colorado. The storm quickly caught us, dropping hail as big as 2 inches in diameter!
That’s the biggest hail I’ve encountered live! It was pretty intense! We stuck around and filmed, allowing the hail to pass to our north.
As we were scooping through the hail on the ground, an excited Jeff Piotrowski pulled up behind us and informed us of a small tornado which briefly touched down about 4 miles to our south.
We hung together for a bit as we pulled stop and go moves while trailing the slow storm which was tornado warned shortly after Jeff informed us of his find. Finally it passed over Cheyenne and off into unchasable territory, never again dropping a tornado from the very pronounced wall cloud (not visibly rotating, though).
We decided to call it a day as dark was falling, even as other storms were firing, nothing too exciting was kicking up. We enjoyed some truck stop food and relaxed for a bit before returning to Denver, hearing news of the mini-outbreak in Eastern Colorado from the 7 messages I had on my phone (a good sign something happened that I missed).
I dropped Dania off at her car and returned home; catching up with Blake Naftel and others before crashing out for the night, hoping to get enough sleep to get me through the Tuesday road trip that lay ahead of me.
Special thanks to Dania Walker for braving my storm chasing obsession and coming along. She’s quite the trooper, you should’ve heard her enjoying the sounds of shotgun blasts on my car ! Also special thanks to Doug Kiesling for his invaluable nowcast and to James Carnegie who always has a word for me while I’m out. Not the success that others out east had, but I love a good hailstorm! Very well worth the trip up north! A nice warm-up for the days to come.
