Saturday, June 6, 2009

BUST

Only fitting on a day after a great chase. We sat in western Iowa along I-80 for a couple of hours this afternoon before dropping down into the town of Atlantic, IA to get some Mexican food, a beer or two, and a room for the night at Turkey Creek Lodge. One last chase day tomorrow in the same region before we head back to Norman and back to work.

REPORT: June 5, 2009 Goshen Co. Wyoming

My dad and I watched the entire life cycle of the Goshen Co. WY supercell and tornado yesterday afternoon. Incredible chase for sure, here's a brief summary.

Chasing into Wyoming for the 2nd time in my career.


We got bored waiting for the cap to break and did some sight seeing in Pine Bluffs, WY.


Dad point to the wall cloud saying 'that's where its going to be'


Sure enough, not long after, a few funnels came down and then the main tornado dropped.


We enjoyed watching tornadogenesis from a distance but I had to move up the road for a closer view. The tornado became partially rainwrapped but we still managed some shots.




We continued north where the weakening rain-wrapped tornado crossed the road near the north of us. It emerged out of the rain again while roping out giving us some great shots.




I'll get some video up sometime next week once we get back from our chase-marathon.

Friday, June 5, 2009

Tornado in WY

Got on a great tornado earlier near LaGrange, WY. I'll get some pics and vid stills up ASAP.

Heading Towards Wyoming

This afternoon's chase will take us to ne CO, se WY, sw NE region. Currently on the way to Pine Bluffs, WY. Looks like a better threat for some nice supercells in that area today.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

REPORT: June 4, 2009 Elbert County CO




Update from the Front Range

We're on a couple of severe warned storms west of Limon, CO. Got some nice shots of Pikes Peak as well as some structure shots. Heading towards Limon currently on a SVR storm.

Back on I-70 towards Colorado

Was doing some tests on the blog earlier with the cell phone but not having great luck with posting pictures to the site via phone. Back to the chase today, we're back on I-70 near Hays currently and will head for a initial target between I-76 and I-70 just east of Denver. We might be a little late but hopefully storms may stay a bit more isolated with better shear finally making its way back to the plains today and throughout the next week or so.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

REPORT: June 2, 2009 TX

We ended the first half of our chase trip yesterday in western TX chasing a couple of SVR/TOR warned storms along an old outflow boundary. I think the boundary moved too far south of the better vertical shear therefore causing the storms to become quite HP in nature and fail to produce any tornadoes. Here's a short video of some of the highlights:


The second half of the chase vacation will start tomorrow and last through the weekend. Hopefully this leg of the trip will offer more tornadic potential. Check back for more updates and reports from the road.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Chase Trip Update

We chased around north central KS yesterday evening getting on a few severe warned storms early that had a decent look and even some rotation before quickly lining out and becoming a mass of crap. Stayed overnight in Newton, KS and now we are on our way south and will get to OKC then head west along I-40 towards the TX/OK border. Not much high hopes for today but maybe we can catch a surprise in the TX panhandle.

Monday, June 1, 2009

REPORT: May 31, 2009 South Dakota

We got on a few severe warned storms in se SD yesterday. The first was an isolated cell near Lake Franics Case just to the north of Platte. Seen here is a shot of the high based storm growing.


We continued to stay on it for a while and it had a small lowering that was reported as a 'wall cloud'. Not sure about how accurate that was though. Here is a shot.


We decided to bail on that storm as it became a bit more outflowish and decided to target the tail end of a severe line north of I-90 near Huron. Driving up on the storm near Mitchell the updraft was fairly impressive and the storm became tornado warned displaying some decent rotation and and intereting lowering back in the rain. We were trying to get into better postion so no pics were taken but I might get a video still up later. The storm quickly became outflow dominant and we decided to just call it a day and headed towards Sioux City, IA to get some sleep.

This morning we are targeting the nearly stationary frontal boundary in southern NE. Currently on the road driving towards Lincoln, NE or somewhere near there. More later...