We headed north from Denver to chance our luck with upslope flow over Wyoming, just north of a cold front. As we headed north, storms formed over the Rockies to our west, and so it was an early start to proceedings!
We found our way to the north-west of Cheyenne, on the road to Horse Creek. We watched our storm to the SW, which had been severe thunderstorm warned for a time, start to fizzle somewhat. A tornado warning was issued for a storm to the NE of Denver, and this seemed like rubbing salt into the wounds.
However, we persevered with our storm, and continued to head towards Horse Creek. We waited for a while and it began to crank up again, with numerous bands of low cloud racing into the updraught area.
We found a better position and watched as one, then another, funnels formed to our south-west. Over the next 20 mins or so we watched a tornado develop, and then die out, but further funnels formed. We're unsure whether some of these funnels, especially the very first, were tornadoes - the first may well have been. Thus, by these point we had seen at least one tornado.
Hail started to fall, and we decided to head north, on the road to Chugwater. I noticed the base was looking very good again, so we stopped, and watched a large cone tornado form, and last for several minutes.
We then continued to Chugwater, driving through quite a barrage of CG lightning. On reaching Chugwater we headed south on I-25, before stopping and watching the impressive supercell to our south. We spied the closing moments of a large tornado within the rain curtains, but it wasn't something which came out well on pictures. We then saw a cone tornado develop within the rain curtains to our SE, which made it 4 tornadoes for the day, and perhaps 5 if the initial funnel was one, which some chasers have reported it was.
Unfortunately a number of houses were damaged by the tornadoes, and we saw a vehicle and its trailer overturned at the side of I-25 as we headed south to Cheyenne for the night - the emergency services were on scene, and this would have happened as the storm crossed the road, as we were a number of miles to the north.
All in all an impressive storm,
nice catch!
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