Talk about a welcome back to the state, huh! Less than 24 hours after moving from Kansas to Colorado (in the middle of the prior day’s tornado watch, none-the-less), I was already on the road. My wife and I had got back to the state the day before, checked in to the Longmont hotel where we would be temporary residents while we closed on our house, and checked out said house for the first time. All that out of the way meant I was going to go chasing on my first full day back in Colorado.
I was on a pretty skeleton setup as I had it full of crap and cats the day before. No laptops, one camera, one video camera, and my phone. Old-school if you will. Just enough to get the job done. I swung down to Denver to scoop up Ed, and we headed out east via I-70 to Limon where we staged initially among a bunch of chasers who also wanted to partake in the day’s festivities. Our first storm went up not long after noon and we proceeded north toward Last Chance, settling in for a decent view as the storm quickly organized.
We followed the northeast-moving cell up to Last Chance, then cut east to stay out ahead of it, getting over to CO-63 and working our way north toward Akron.
As we got even with the hook there south of Akron, a funnel poked down, and we observed ground contact! Not even in the state 24 hours, and I bag my first Colorado tornado to kick off my second residence stint in the Centennial State!
It won’t find a place on the wall, but it definitely finds a place in my heart. What a ‘Welcome back to Colorado’ gift from Mother Nature, a tornado on my first full day back! The tornado lifted fairly quickly, and we continued the pursuit north to Akron, cutting back west on US-34 to try and get a view in the now HP supercell. The are of interest was heavily rain-wrapped, so we poked in as far as we dared.
It was pretty tough making anything out, and we could not see anything that indicated to us that another tornado was in progress despite the rather impressive radar presentation. We pulled back out of the way, watching as the cells began to line out to our west. Meanwhile, further to the south, more cells were popping south of I-70. We thought for sure this was going to be the bigger show, so we hauled east over to Yuma to get ourselves set up to drop in on those cells.
We dropped south out of Yuma on CO-59, rolling down to I-70 as the storms were strengthening, one prompting a tornado warning.
We let the core pass over us, getting into some sub-severe hail, all of it less than the severe-required 1″, but very heavy rain.
We got on the backside of the storm, stopping at the Vona exit where we decided we had enough for the day.
This will be a very fun chase to remember given the move I undertook the day before, also during a tornado watch as I’ve mentioned a time or two. Believe it or not, Colorado was not particularly good to me during my first 15-year stint with most of my good tornado days taking place after I relocated to Illinois in 2013. To start stint #2 here like this is pretty special, especially since I was able to team up with my longtime friend and chase partner, Ed Grubb, whom was in a bit of a tornado drought himself going into this chase. We hadn’t chased together in a couple years, so right out of the gate, some of the reasons we decided to return here to Colorado were already presenting themselves.
What an awesome ‘Welcome Back Home’ gift from Ma-Nature… Colorado is my Meteorological home, and the weather here was something I missed since I left. So there are not many words to describe how cool it was to be welcomed back here with a solid chase day and my first tornado on my first full day back!
