Stormchasing June 6 & 7 (Anticyclonic Tornado!)

June 6th we headed up North, stopping briefly to chat at a large chaser convergence near Fort Morgan. Waiting up in New Raymer, the clouds really weren't in a hurry to do much, though it still must've been the most interesting thing in the country since we kept running into the Dominator. As the clouds kept back building, a decent storm eventually developed over Parker around sunset.

Chaser convergence!

Super low "scud bomb" in Parker

There was a ton of amazing scud (low scraggly cloud) all over, there were several bunches slowly rotating and passing by nearly on the ground! We didn't see the short-lived tornado since we were on the other side of the rain, but the storm itself and lightning were interesting enough anyway.

Tornado was on the other side of this

Low rotating clouds passing in front of us

Driving back through Parker the hail drifts and flooding was impressive, and we even had a late-night severe-warned storm pass right over the house after we got back. There was also a surprise 1:30 am hailstorm that woke the whole neighborhood!

Mammatus clouds before our lightning show after dark

The next day was a substantially better chase. On June 7 we started out waiting in Bennett, Colorado.  Since we were there early we found a few geocaches to pass the time.  Before anything in Colorado started, there was already a large storm and tornado up in southeast Wyoming.  It was tempting to bail and run up there, but we hung tight to our target and eventually storms began to build right over us.

Watching storms build with a decked-out news truck

 We ended up on a promising storm near Deer Trail.  However there was something very unusual about this storm: it was moving southwest instead of northeast!  It's not often a supercell does that, but this storm held its direction as it continued to intensify.  Driving closer to it, we discovered this storm packed a ton of large hail.  Under a large downpour of 1 to 1-1/2 inch hail (don't worry, Verne's car is Rhino-lined)  we discovered a few baseball-sized chunks and got a crack in the windshield.  We were probably just on the edge of the large hail, and saw many other chasers with much worse windshield damage.
Once we got out ahead of the storm again we stopped to photograph it.  After just a few minutes the hail caught up with us suddenly and started dropping more 1+ inch hail.  We bolted back to the car with no major injuries.

In front of the supercell - before hail chased us back to the car!

The rotation on this storm had become extraordinarily intense, and several small funnel clouds had already tried but failed to form a tornado.  Apparently south moving storms tend to have a very hard time forming tornadoes, since they're moving against some of the important winds and elements they need.

Approaching Ramah and Calhan

The storm

The most intense area of rotation became hidden in rain, so we could only assume if there was a tornado, it was hail and rain-wrapped.   The damage later indicated that there was a large EF1 tornado in there, as it moved farm equipment and destroyed several small buildings.

A rain-wrapped tornado was somewhere back there

With no visibility back there, we instead turned our focus to a different area of rotation on the storm.  Sure enough, a white funnel began to descend.  We could see it briefly reach the ground and lift again as we were racing to get close to it.  Once we stopped to get out of the car and take photos, Eric noticed something unusual: the funnel was rotating clockwise.  In the northern hemisphere, tornadoes rotate counterclockwise, and the opposite only tends to occur in the southern hemisphere.  That made this tornado "anti-cyclonic," a very rare occurrence and one that even Verne had never seen!

Anti-cyclonic tornado!

Eric's video of the tornado:


NOAA report on the storm: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=pub&storyid=83984&source=0 (my photo is featured at the end)

Heading back

We got back in the car and moved closer as it continued to lift.  Unfortunately it didn't drop again, and the sun was already on the horizon.   Heading west to the freeway, we drove through another small storm dropping 1 inch hail, while being treated to an amazing display of clouds at sunset.

One more hail-dropping storm on our way home

Sunset in Colorado Springs

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

Supermoon Photo Shoot

I've had "largest full moon of 2012" marked down for May 5th in my calendar since sometime last year. Even with that much time to think about a location to view it from, I was still drawing a blank the morning I had to make a decision. Not wanting to make a long hike (in case the weather didn't cooperate) I decided on the side of a scenic mountain on the west end of Golden, Colorado. Eric and I got there an hour early to claim a good viewing spot.

Last light over Golden

I finally have a good enough lens to get a clean shot of downtown Denver

What I hadn't anticipated was the spectacular sunset we got right as the moon was rising. I found myself frantically changing lenses while trying to shoot both subjects, since they were in different areas of the sky.

Golden bathed in golden light

The moon came into view right on time. I got all the shots I needed, and after only 10 minutes it went behind clouds for the rest of the night.

"Lunar Perigee" - the supermoon rising

April 14 - Tornado Outbreak

April 14, 2012 was a historic day for stormchasing. This was the last day of the 4-day chasing trip with Verne and Eric Carlson and I. It was the first day I finally got to see a tornado, and will likely be my best chase day for a long time.

Everyone knew this was going to be a big day. The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center gave it a high risk rating the day before, which they said "is only the second time a high risk has been issued for the day two forecast, and the first time ever it has been issued for the initial D2 outlook." High risks are usually issued the day of, and they are extremely rare. I've only chased slight risks and maybe one or two moderates that got downgraded to slight.

Severe weather outlook the morning of 4-14

The morning of the chase, the data said the probability for tornadoes in the high risk area was 45% hatched, meaning at any random point on the map there would almost be a 50/50 chance of having a twister within 25 miles at some point in the day. That's extremely high.

The blue is our path through the day

We started off the day heading up to Smith Center from Russell. The cells were a bit messy, just lots of rain and lighting. At one point we heard a nearby town testing their tornado sirens.
Next we moved east to Beloit in hopes of glimpsing a twister that had been reported on a cell moving that way. Visibility was low with a lot of heavy rain. Following behind two other cars to where the storm would meet us, the other two suddenly pulled over. The Carlson's wondered what they knew that we didn't, when suddenly we got a radar update that looked as though the area of rotation had made a sharp turn straight for us! We back up and paced around a bit and studied the rain to figure out where a twister could be in it. At one point the rain cleared enough to see what supposedly was a tornado. So technically this could be my first tornado, but I wouldn't have recognized it as such and didn't see it long enough to distinguish any rotation.

A rain-wrapped tornado, somewhere in there

Back in Beloit, the flooding was incredible. Because of all the washed out roads we had to turn around several times while trying to make our way south, and eventually went back into town only to find cops staring to barricade the main roads!

Flooding all around Beloit, KS

Finally we escaped and dove down to a new cell near Lyons. It started out as two separate promising storms, but they merged into one. We waited awhile to see if it could recover from the merge. Verne decided to give it one more chance before we would look for another storm, so we turned North to get closer to it. Just over the hill, a tornado came into view. Of course I thought they were pointing at the little satellite on the left, and that big wide thing was just a wall cloud. As we got closer I saw the 'wall cloud' seemed to be touching the ground. And rotating. Now THAT is a tornado.

A monster tornado comes into view

Though I have been stormchasing 10 other times now, the 'chase' part really didn't make much sense until the moment a real tornado came into view. Most of what I've done previously would be more like storm watching and storm following. NOW there was actually something to chase. Tornadoes can move very fast, and this one was definitely moving away from us. Trusting Verne's 30 years of chasing experience, he got us where we needed to be!

That's us, on a mission

The monster cone tornado

At one point we turned around from downed power lines, and eventually got stopped again by trees blocking the road that the twister had just torn up. That was just about the end of our time with this tornado. After that we had some navigation issues on bad dirt roads and fell too far behind. The tornado went a little farther and lifted right at the north edge of Salina. They really dodged a bullet, a lot of chasers compared this tornado to Tuscaloosa and it would have caused the similar damage had it hit town.

Destruction, the Carlson chasers, and the EF4 tornado

The most impressive damage we saw from it was crossing a bridge and riverbed. There was a brown dirt trail it had left through a field, and incredible tree damage and churned earth over the dry river. That's what it was hitting when I took that panoramic photo above, and right where it is in the popular Twistex Sameras video.

One good thing about seeing a tornado this intense is that it didn't cause any injuries. There were plenty of snapped power poles and one house that had some roof and front porch damage. The NWS rated it an EF4 (the scale is 0-5).

Me with the tornado. Yes, it was exciting.

We jumped on the interstate and caught up to the storm again northeast of Salina, just north of Solomon. The traffic jam from stormchasers and gawking locals was incredible. Eventually we somehow got way ahead of the crowd, and were one of the very few cars that got to stop and enjoy the amazing rope-out stage of this tornado.

Local news helicopter flying towards the forming tornado

A classic Kansas twister

This odd-shaped twister held up for just a few minutes

Everyone earned a steak dinner after this day. We met up with Michael Carlson and Eric Haave at Logans Roadhouse and swapped stories and photos before heading back to Russell for the night.

The traffic jam of chasers arrived as soon as it was over

Now the best for last: Here's Eric's video from the day!



4 days, 2,883 miles.
Big thanks to Verne Carlson for bringing Eric and I on this journey!

Storm Chase-cation

Eric's dad invited us on an epic stormchasing trip at the end of last week. Zig zagging across tornado alley, from Colorado we visited both Texas and Nebraska once, and crossed through Oklahoma and Kansas three times each. Over 4 days, Verne and Eric Carlson and I went a total of 2,883 miles.

April 11
We left early afternoon and raced down to La Junta and the Comanche Grasslands. The storms ended up not doing a lot, and there was an incredible haze that really limited visibility. On our way to Amarillo for the night, the road was closed from Dumas on because of large hail drifts. Took the long way around and stopped to watch lightning illuminate another developing storm heading back into Dumas.

April 12
The target moved up to Goodland, KS. We went up the road to Dumas to see the hail drifts, and later in Cactus we saw some major flooding.

A car that wondered off the road at night

Flooding in Cactus, TX

Waiting in Goodland along I-70, nothing seemed to be developing where everyone was expecting. Eventually some cells did fire up north at the Nebraska border. We raced up there and found a good vantage point just south of Trenton NE. A small funnel cloud developed, but that was the most we got.

A small funnel cloud forms

We got gas in Atwood KS and ran into the Dominator from the "Storm Chasers" TV show. I was excited to finally see it. Verne and Eric however were much less impressed and just stopped to catch up with Reed Timmer (who was totally zoned from both chasing and working on his phd).

The Dominator stormchase vehicle

April 13
Driving south to our target of Enid OK, I got to hear many fascinating stories of all the tornadoes Verne has seen driving on the exact roads we were traveling.
We made time to stop in Wakita, Oklahoma to see the 'Twister' museum. This was the main town that got hit by a tornado in the movie.

Wakita, Oklahoma!

'Twister' movie props

The only storm that produced a tornado that day went over Norman, on the southeast side of Oklahoma City. We didn't want to deal with traffic close to the city so opted to stay on the outskirts, and watched a cell over Chickasha instead. It went outflow dominant, but someone said they saw Verne's live web stream airing on CNN while we were watching it.

West of Oklahoma City

On the drive back to Russell, there were spinouts every mile from all the rain. Earlier we had even seen a kid hydroplane off the road right in front of us.
The last day of our trip by far had the best storm outlook, but that day deserves its own page. Next post: April 14, 2012 tornado outbreak.