Quick Summary
I'm too tired to write this up so I'll do it in the SUV tomorrow and pick out some photos.
We stopped near Joes, Colorado with our best looking storm going tornado warned which was a pleasant surprise as the SPC was still showing a marginal risk. In the distance it had a very pronounced wall cloud and it almost immediately put down a straggly tornado which caught us photographers on the hop. By the time I'd retrieved my long lens from the rammed van it had gone. Peter called it in and it was confirmed by another spotter. We chased the storm for some time which had some fantastic structure and wall clouds that look fit to burst to put down another tornado right in front of us.
We eventually headed south, collected the I70, headed east to Burlington, grabbed a McDonalds and then drove to our hotel, Super 8 in Goodland Kansas through torrential rain and spectacular lightning. Braved the torrent to get a couple of beers and it's now time for bed. Amazing day!
The not much longer version
A long drive towards Yuma, Colorado with one storm
intensifying to 50,000 feet, showing 3”
hail and strong TVS markers. Got to Cope, Co at 17:45 Mountain Time. Note: this
can be a bit of a gotcha in that you sometimes don’t realise that you’ve gone
from Central (-6 BST), to Mountain (-7 BST) with the real possibility of
setting the morning alarm and hour early, or worse an hour late.
We stopped 15 miles
north of Joes and just as we got out of the SUV to view the storm it put down a
straggly tornado from under a prominent wall cloud about 20 miles away which
was confirmed through a telephoto lens (dust swirl apparent) and from another
spotter’s report.
We dropped south back towards Cope to get a better view and
were rewarded with a number of wall
clouds, lowerings and good rotation boot sadly no further tornadoes. Continued
south and stopped again towards sunset
with the now strong outflow back lit by the sun. Wow.
We carried on south back through Seibert and then east onto
the I70. Several storms had now come
together to form an outflow line with lots of torrential rain and spectacular
lightning. We arrived at Burlington with the intention of eating at Arby’s which
was now closed so we had to slum it at McDonalds. Another 30 minutes east and
we were at the Super 8 in Goodland, the car parks looking like small lakes.
Despite Peter’s considered driving down the interstate with speed appropriate
to the conditions we were overtaken by several semis still going full tilt
causing the Suburban to twitch as they shot past.
A jog through the rain to the adjacent gas station for a
couple of weak, tasteless Mexican lagers
for Marcus and was followed by backing up the photos, publishing the
blog (as far as I got) and putting a quick update on facebook was as far as I
got before slumping into bed. Great day on a another “rubbish” marginal set up.
Total miles: 511
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