Was pretty late in the evening when some scattered storms blew up along the US-34 corridor a few miles north of my house. The initial line exploded up near Greeley, and that storm went severe with enormous amounts of hail along with large hail of golfballs and bigger up that way. For me, I was lacking a ton of motivation to get up to the east side of town, and combined with concerns over whether the storm would even hold out that long as these seemed more like pulse-type storms than anything that would sustain, I decided not to make the 20-minute run to Greeley. Instead, I opted to take my chances on the lightning.
Having not unpacked my gear from the most recent chase trip, that meant all my cameras were conveniently in one bag, so I grabbed it, taking a quick second to ensure I had some extra batteries as nothing had been charged since returning home. I also had been lucky that all my tripods were still in my car, so I had those lying in the backseat when I got to the garage.
Easy target just a few miles east of the house on the other side of US-85 near Gilcrest. From there, I had a very unobstructed view looking north where the lightning was pretty intense. The storm was also pretty intense, and definitely was surviving longer than a typical ‘pulse’ storm would.
The storm was putting up a good load of CGs; striking with good frequency. At first, I was running a single camera fairly tight on the CG action under the storm. Multiple CGs in several of the frames as I fired off 10-20 second exposures.
However, I was intrigued with the wider aspect of the storm as it was lighting up nicely. Fortunately because I had both cameras in the bag, one that had my wide angle, and of course having multiple tripods, I set up the wide angle camera and snagged multiple shots where, albeit not as cool, but one I REALLY loved.
Now this would’ve been one of those nights where I would have dozens upon dozens of shots. But there was a cell to the west of this one, which went severe not long after I set up shop, but it was between I-25 and Greeley up toward Windsor initially, so I didn’t give it a TON of thought. But as it grew, it grew to the south as it was slowly crawling southeast. Suddenly, a hail core intercept was in the cards as this was heading straight for Johnstown, and also my house.
Well that changes things… I decided I was happy enough with the lightning to split my treasure and get in for the hail. Also with this storm taking aim on my house, I of course wanted to be there in case I could intercept this from the comfort of my own garage. So back west I went, catching CO-60 up and over through Milliken to Johnstown where I got into the front edge of the core about a mile east of downtown.
It had already been hailing pretty good for a bit there in Johnstown. I initially pulled into the shopping center complex on the southwest corner of the downtown intersection. The hail at this point all looked pretty small, perhaps up to an inch, but it was well covering the ground upon my arrival to the complex.
As the hail continued to pour down, the size began to get a little bigger. The density of the falling hail didn’t wane as it usually seems to do when the hail size gets bigger in these types of storms, and it just continued to unleash, but growing from maybe an inch up to approaching golfballs now.
Not a lot of people were out at this hour, but those that were tried to find cover anywhere they could. Hail fog was also settling in as visibility started to get a little lower as the ground continued to see accumulating hail from this long-duration storm.
As the torrent of hail and rain continued, street flooding was also starting to take hold. South Parish Ave near the shopping center turned into South Parish River as a flow of water now took over the road.
The storm was moving so slowly to the east/southeast, enough so where I shot for about 20 minutes myself (storm itself likely parked over Johnstown easily for 30-minutes or more). But with things starting to lighten up and my house next on the storm’s radar, I whipped around the complex to get on CO-60 as to avoid the now river that was Parish Ave, and busted back east the two miles to Milliken, basically racing the storm to my house.
When I arrived to my house, the hail hadn’t actually started there, even as the west side of town was starting to see some small hail from the leading edge of the storm. Fortunately for me, the storm was quickly weakening, but when it finally got over me, it did pour some pretty good amounts of sub-severe hail.
It hailed here for about 10, maybe 15 minutes, nothing that exceeded nickel sized, so we were certainly spared the wrath that Johnstown just a couple miles west suffered.
