Today was a cracking chase day. We started in Cheyenne, and decided we would target a very obvious outflow boundary across NE and E Colorado. We headed for Limon, but in the end carried on past Limon a few miles, to Bovina. We met up with a couple of chaser friends, Dan Holley and Pete Scott. We watched the sky for a while, noting the pronounced low-level shear as the bases of the cumuli moved south-westwards, whilst the tops were being pushed to the north.
After a while we decided to continue eastwards, reaching Flagler, where we picked up some lunch - but didn't eat it then - we needed to push on! A storm had developed to our north-west, so we made it to Seibert, and then headed north.
On our way up to Cope we noticed some dust off to the west, which turned out to be a non-mesocyclone tornado (colloquially known as a 'landspout' - they form from local vorticity being stretched by a passing updraught rather than by complex interactions underneath a strongly rotating low-level mesocyclone - they're still tornadoes, though!).
We then continued north to Cope and then westwards by a few miles. We found a good vantage point but the extensive low-level stratus clouds being pulled into multiple updraughts meant we couldn't see much structure.
However, what we did see was a series of further non-mesocylone tornadoes developing one after another, some way to our south-west. At times, at least 2 were occurring at the same time.
These appeared to develop on the flanking line feeding into the main updraught, which soon started to exhibit strong low-level rotation. Hail started to fall so we retreated eastwards by a few miles.
We could then see the low-level mesocyclone just to our south-west, which tightened up and produced a brief tornado, which quickly got wrapped in rain. We headed east again, and then looked right into the notch of the HP supercell, and another tornado developed just about a mile to our west. It was a narrow rope tornado, but was heading towards us. When it was within about 1/4 mile we decided to head off to the east.
The storms then formed more into a line, and so we headed, via several stops, to Burlington. We decided to stay here for the night, despite the prospect of a long drive tomorrow to SW Kansas, the TX Panhandle, or W Oklahoma. We saw a number of other chasers when we went for dinner at The Dish Room - which was a very good place for dinner!
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