Thursday 7 June 2018

Home!

Hello! Well, we're home now and already missing the wide-open Plains! It was a great couple of weeks.

Wednesday 6 June 2018

Packing up

Hello. We're packing our bags now and will head to Denver today ready for our evening flight home. It's been a great couple of weeks with many storms and catching up with friends.

June 5th - mountains!

Hello.

Today we drove from Denver to the top of Mount Evans, which is over 14,000ft above sea level. We managed to walk the last small part to the top, but at that altitude even a fairly modest bit of walking gets the heart pounding, and feelings of light-headedness. The sun is very strong at that altitude too.

After we'd reached the summit we headed down, and paused for lunch by a lake - still at 13,000ft above sea level.

We then decided to treat ourselves on the last night and booked into the Four Seasons at Vail, Colorado. I had a swim.

Tomorrow we will head to Denver and get the plane home, and arrive around the middle of the day on Thursday.











Tuesday 5 June 2018

June 4th - storms done with!

Hello.

We woke up this morning in Amarillo, checked various pieces of data and determined that storms were not likely nearby, and we weren't really interested in hanging around, so we decided to head to Denver and be tourist. Tomorrow we will go into the mountains.

The only pics today were from a (closed) rest area on US Highway 64 (the Sierra Grande rest area) near Des Moines, New Mexico, of a train.




Monday 4 June 2018

June 3rd report

Hello.

We targeted Albuquerque today. Storms were already firing off as we drove down from Raton, and we managed to get to a storm which had been tornado-warned, but it tended to wane, as new storms formed to its south.

We then headed east through very heavy rain, on I-40, and turned south at Moriarty. We saw some nice cloud structure on the way south as a supercell approached, although it became more linear after a while.

We then headed east to Vaughn, pausing to look back at the line of storms. At Vaughn we let the storms roll over, although they were non-severe by then where we were, but there were some good, close lightning bolts!

We then decided to head to Amarillo for the night as there is a risk of storms around this area on Monday.

All in all a reasonable chase day which behaved as expected.






Sunday 3 June 2018

3rd June - lunch

Hello.

We've just stopped to pick up a sandwich from Santa Fe, New Mexico, but will soon continue SW towards Albuquerque - a severe thunderstorm watch is in effect and a severe thunderstorm is already some way to our SW. 

Brief tornado video from May 28th

A short clip of the two brief mesocyclone-spawned tornadoes from May 28th, 2018 - taken with my GoPro4, near Cope, Colorado - this was after the numerous 'dusty' tornadoes (most non-mesocyclone).



https://youtu.be/9Tj8-u-i9rw

June 2nd report

Hello.

Fairly straightforward day today - drove from Grand Island, NE, to Raton, NM - about 585 miles. As we approached Trinidad, CO, just after sunset, we noted smoke from the large fire around Ute, NM. There were various waves, etc, in the smoke.


Saturday 2 June 2018

June 1st report

Hello.

We started the day in North Platte, Nebraska. We decided to target the area around Broken Bow/Ansley. We headed to Broken Bow and had our lunch there. A cold front was approaching from the west, and storms formed along it from north to south as the afternoon progressed. We targeted a promising cell, but it became linear quite quickly. Storms formed increasingly quickly southwards along the cold front such that it was really just a line of storms by early evening. A brief tornado did occur north of where we were, as we moved south, and we didn't see it - but a few chasers did.

We got to Ansley, briefly pausing at the gas station where we stopped ahead of last August's eclipse, before heading SE on the road to Grand Island.

We stopped a couple of times to look back at the storms, as there was a persistent cell on the southern end for a time, which may have been a supercell.

Near Ravenna we stopped for a while and I took some lightning pics. We saw a wall cloud evolve to our NW, and soon a tornado warning was issued for this part of the line. We saw a couple of funnel clouds, and a couple of people reported seeing a brief tornado.

We then headed to Grand Island and had a late dinner in Perkins. It's now 0143 and we can hear occasional thunder, and train horns.









Friday 1 June 2018

June 1st - lunch

Hello. We started the day in North Platte. The south-easterly wind had picked up and the dew points were high, so it felt much more like a typical severe weather day from that perspective.

The general target area was to the ENE - so we have driven to Broken Bow, and will either hang around here, or head to Ansley, and await developments.