Supercell near Denver

We started the day in Hays and headed over 200 miles west to Limon, Colorado, for lunch. We wolfed it down pretty quickly as a severe thunderstorm had developed over Denver. This became tornado warned, and also developed into a supercell. We headed NW and W for an intercept but it was a high precipitation supercell and so seeing any tornadic development was very tricky. Add in the fact some large hail was lurking within its writhing mass, and the traffic was very heavy, we opted to hold back a bit.

We did note, after a while, increasing motion on the leading edge of the RFD - this was a newly developing wall cloud - this rotated rapidly for a time, and was not far to our west. We headed east again but within a convoy of a large number of chasers. There were certainly a lot about today, and some of the driving left a lot to be desired, especially ambling along at 30mph or so - come on folks!

This was all close to and east of Byers. We then continued east to Last Chance, by which time the storm was beginning to be overtaken, somewhat, by a line moving in from the SW. We let this pass over and then got some nice shots of the landscape and the sky.

We then headed to Burlington for the night. A reasonable chase day, but with poor visibility and a lot of traffic it wasn't the greatest! Even so, we're out on the Plains enjoying it all!


Wall cloud near Bennett.

East of Byers.

East of Byers.

Between Byers and Last Chance.

On the way to Burlington.