Stormchasing May 25

The promising weather models on the morning of May 25 were a great surprise. We hadn't planned for any chasing that day, but Verne called us early so Eric and I met up with him on I-70 and headed to Kansas. We waited in Russell for a few hours, then headed out a few miles to watch the storms build.

A storm begins to grow

This storm grew quickly and soon started pulling up waves of dust and debris from all the farm fields under it. Much of the dirt began to spin up into short-lived gustnados. We spotted a few clear ones close by as we were skirting by the edge of the debris cloud.

Large gustnado

Dust storms

Moving northeast, it passed right over Russell but the base got higher in the process. There was still some rotation when it got to the other side of the city, but wasn't close enough to the ground to drop any tornadoes or even spin up any more gustnados.

Storm passes over Russell

Letting this storm go, there were tornado reports on another storm about an hour southwest. While heading that way, we passed by a different one between the two. It looked pretty promising so we circled towards it. Ending up on the rainy side we couldn't see a whole lot, but did catch a brief glimpse of a cone tornado forming.

First view of a tornado through all the rain

Once we fought our way out of the rain, an amazing rope tornado appeared. It spanned half the sky from our view. The only problem was I didn't want to wander too far from the car for photos since the drillbit end seemed so close. It made a turn in our direction, and not waiting to see if it was aiming in front of or behind us, we took off back east. At this point it turned west again and roped out before we could stop for another view.

Rope tornado southwest of Russell

By then the sun had set and visibility was limited to whatever the lightning could show us. Although there were more tornadoes hidden in the dark, we headed for home. Watching the radar on the drive, the next two tornado-producing storms made a beeline straight for Russell, but thankfully only skirted the edge of town at last minute.

Webster Lake, KS

We had another short chase on the 27th. From Denver we headed out through Colby, KS then zig-zagged northeast. While waiting for storms to fire we found some relief from the heat at Webster Lake.  We kept moving north to Holdridge, NE. The only good storms ended up starting much farther north. There were hardly any chasers in position way up there. It was supposed to be a really good hail day rather than tornado day, but we didn't see much hail either. Headed back home on I-80 in defeat, hoping for a better chase another day.

Solar Eclipse 2012

Having just arrived back in town two days earlier, I was unsure rather I wanted to make the full drive down to New Mexico again for the solar eclipse. Denver would still be able to see a partial, but the total would have to be viewed from New Mexico. Thankfully, the weather was in our favor and the day before turned into a stormchasing day, and the plan was we could just stop in New Mexico for the eclipse on the way home.

Eclipsed sun setting behind the windmills

Verne Carlson picked us up at 6am on May 19th. We followed an early morning thunderstorm out east and worked our way down to Kit Carson, where we intercepted a storm with 1 and 1/4 inch hail. I thought this must be some of the largest hail I've ever seen, but Verne and Eric keep saying 'just wait until you see baseball sized hail!'

Falling hail, those poor cars without Rhino lining!

We can safely say this was indeed 1-1/4 inch hail

We didn't see a lot else the rest of the day other than some moderately interesting clouds. When we got down to Oklahoma there was a promising storm (which later produced tornadoes) just North back over Kansas border. Didn't go for it since we thought it wouldn't produce a tornado until it was much farther away, and wanted to stay close to Amarillo for the eclipse, which we all considered to be the more important target. The storms farther South didn't do a lot. Enjoyed a Texas Roadhouse dinner after arriving in Amarillo and helping out with maintenance on the house.

Mammatus clouds in western Oklahoma

Early afternoon on Sunday the 20th we headed from Amarillo to Vaughn, New Mexico. Drove down to the exact center line the eclipse would cross, then headed back North just a bit for a better location. Found a great spot off the road with distant windmills, the only problem was the occasional train that would pass right in front of us! Thankfully there were only a few and they didn't interfere when we really needed to see the sun. Eric and Verne set up a telescope projected onto paper so we could safely watch the progress and stream it live to the web.

Projecting the sun onto paper

Eric enjoys safe viewing

The eclipse started at 6:23 pm, and totality was 7:33 to 7:38. We only had one cloud block our view for a few minutes just as it was starting, and otherwise had perfectly clear skies. I was really surprised by the 3D effect of the moon. The edges of it had light bleeding over the curvature rather than appearing as a flat black disc. We left just as soon as the sun set and got back home around 1:30am.

Total eclipse, I really liked the ring-shaped lens flare!

Totality of an annular solar eclipse

A crescent sun just after totality

Eric holds up the sun