Thursday, 22 May 2014
Decisions!
Hanging around in Burlington for a little while...a very marginal supercell risk west of here today, which may tempt us to hang about instead of going to Amarillo.
May 22nd thoughts
Morning! After yesterday's action the upper flow is even weaker today, so supercell structures seem fairly unlikely. Even so, a large slight risk area has been posted by the SPC, effectively down a lot of the High Plains, along the weak lee trough, where moisture is moving upslope. Some pockets of backed surface flow could allow more storm organisation, e.g. around and north of the Palmer Divide in mid-Colorado into the NE of the state, or further south across Baca County, north of the Raton Mesa. The choice is to whether to hang around here or points NW of here (Burlington) to catch any stronger cells here, or make our way to the Texas Panhandle for potential severe storms, including at least a risk of a supercell, over the next few days. We've decided to head south, as it's 6-7 hours to Amarillo, and we may catch some storms on the way.
Funnel cloud from high-based convection
A quick extra post regarding yesterday's events - May 21. I mentioned in the last post that we saw a funnel cloud from high-based convection - a 'shear funnel' some may call it. Either way I didn't post an image, so here is one! It developed from convection east of the main supercell storm.
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.
Between Byers and Last Chance.
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.
Wednesday, 21 May 2014
May 21st thoughts
Good morning.
Today, a slow-moving frontal boundary will lie effectively east-west through portions of central Kansas into central Colorado. A moist airmass exists to the north of this, with a NE'erly feed of winds pushing this air westwards towards the higher ground of Colorado. With time the flow should become more easterly, and further south in Colorado, south-easterly. This should have the effect of causing a Denver Cyclone to evolve, due to the interaction of the flow, and the geographical feature know as the Palmer Divide - this is a ridge of higher ground which extends eastwards to the south of Denver, including places such as Limon, Colorado. This enhances low-level convergence and shear to the east and north-east of Denver, and can aid in the development of severe weather including tornadoes.
To that end we'll head west towards Limon, probably getting there in time for lunch, and then re-assessing. Prelim target is Deer Trail to Wiggins, although in reality anywhere from around Limon to Denver to Fort Morgan looks good.
Nice morning here in Hays:
Today, a slow-moving frontal boundary will lie effectively east-west through portions of central Kansas into central Colorado. A moist airmass exists to the north of this, with a NE'erly feed of winds pushing this air westwards towards the higher ground of Colorado. With time the flow should become more easterly, and further south in Colorado, south-easterly. This should have the effect of causing a Denver Cyclone to evolve, due to the interaction of the flow, and the geographical feature know as the Palmer Divide - this is a ridge of higher ground which extends eastwards to the south of Denver, including places such as Limon, Colorado. This enhances low-level convergence and shear to the east and north-east of Denver, and can aid in the development of severe weather including tornadoes.
To that end we'll head west towards Limon, probably getting there in time for lunch, and then re-assessing. Prelim target is Deer Trail to Wiggins, although in reality anywhere from around Limon to Denver to Fort Morgan looks good.
Nice morning here in Hays:
Hays!
Hello,
We got to Hays after around 570 miles of driving. We had to stop off in Norman, Oklahoma, to swap the SIM card in our mobile wifi device, which delayed us for a bit. However, we got on the move again and arrived in Hays a little before 10pm CDT. We ate dinner in Applebee's and then popped just north of town to see if there was any chance of getting some very distant lightning or even red sprite action from a storm in NW Kansas, near Goodland,. However, I think it was probably too weak by that stage to be producing anything interesting. I did a very quick test of the cable release for the camera and got a few shots of the stars before we decided to head back to the motel - I had a fairly high ISO rating and turned off the camera's noise reduction - it made the pics quite noisy so that's something to bear in mind. It looks like we'll head west tomorrow morning to either western Kansas or into Colorado for a risk of severe storms.
Our car, a GMC Acadia.
We got to Hays after around 570 miles of driving. We had to stop off in Norman, Oklahoma, to swap the SIM card in our mobile wifi device, which delayed us for a bit. However, we got on the move again and arrived in Hays a little before 10pm CDT. We ate dinner in Applebee's and then popped just north of town to see if there was any chance of getting some very distant lightning or even red sprite action from a storm in NW Kansas, near Goodland,. However, I think it was probably too weak by that stage to be producing anything interesting. I did a very quick test of the cable release for the camera and got a few shots of the stars before we decided to head back to the motel - I had a fairly high ISO rating and turned off the camera's noise reduction - it made the pics quite noisy so that's something to bear in mind. It looks like we'll head west tomorrow morning to either western Kansas or into Colorado for a risk of severe storms.
Our car, a GMC Acadia.
Sunset, south of Salina, Kansas
Tuesday, 20 May 2014
Off to Hays
Hello. We're in Norman, Oklahoma, now, having just sorted our Verizon wifi thing out, as it wasn't working. Now we have to continue to Hays, which is 355 miles away! We should get there by 11pm!
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