06/13/2009 REPORTS: CO/TX/OK/KS/WY

[Matthew E. Engelbrecht]

After checking out three storms in the vicinity of and east of Denver, I wound up on the storm that was first tornado-warned near Denver International Airport late in the evening. There were many funnel clouds produced each time the mesocyclone occluded and a lot of great motion in it but I didn't observe anything extending to the ground. One may have gotten close but I had a hill in the way (it was over half way down). What's shown below isn't that one, but just an example of what was fairly common with that storm through the late evening hours.

 

[Jason Boggs]

Got on the storm that formed near Tulia, TX and stayed in front of it until it got to Quitaque and died out. It displayed numerous wall clouds and 1 funnel, but I never confirmed a tornado. Lots of wall clouds would form with decent rotation, and then it would get wrapped in rain. I'm really surprised this cell was never tornado warned.

Met fellow chaser and friend Jay McCoy in Quitaque and we headed back to Amarillo after a bite to eat in Tulia. All in all, it was a pretty good chase, but I was expecting a couple of tornadoes today. Maybe next time...

cell between Tulia and Silverton looking west

another view of cell between Tulia and Silverton.

new cloud formation (upside down funnelimbus crazius

explosive storm with large wall cloud looking SW toward Plainview

from Quitaque right before the storm died

 

[Olivier Staiger]

offroad escape

chased with Gene Moore the storm in SE CO, saw a funnel , and several tornado-looking stuff which were more likely scuds, Cannot report seeing a tor. lots of gustnadoes.

slideshow of selected images of the chase :

http://www.kyte.tv/ch/9038-klipsi/473067-june-13-colorado-stormchase

offroad driving...

at one time, near Springfield CO, we escaped the storm on a dirt road but that dirt road ended in a field, dead end, no more road, and return was no option because of the incoming hail stormfront, so we drove several miles offroad accross the field... it was fun... there was a fence at two moments but both times we were lucky to find an opening in the fence and could drive into the next prairie... till we finally reached a dirt road again... thanks to Gene we had a offroad capable car, Jeep liberty with special offroad wheels and mud-tires...
I did record a video clip in offroad drive but camera was in slow motion mode so it is in slowmotion and has no sound, too bad... so I added music,

here it is

http://www.kyte.tv/ch/9038-klipsi/472978-offroad-storrm-escape-slow-motion


later we found a dirt road again and a paved road, but the storm found us too

http://www.kyte.tv/ch/9038-klipsi/473063-june-13-storm-escape-colorado

 

[Mike Umscheid]

Images from the Kim to Pritchett, CO to Richfield to Hugoton, KS supercell. More details at http://www.underthemeso.com/blog/?p=752

Looking north from a location 15 SSE Pritchett, CO at 7:01pm CDT:

Looking west-northwest from a location along Hwy 56 between Rolla and Hugoton, KS at 8:41pm CDT:

 

[Jeff House]

Aspermont TX torn

My wife and I were on the Aspermont, TX tornado. We decided to head toward Plainview from DFW. Caught up with the supercell around 4:30 pm, then well east of Plainview, and followed it to Aspermont. At 6:05 to 6:10 pm a gustnado formed and this is the photo as it got started. We were moving away from it and visibility became poor due to other blowing dust. Sam Shamburger has a great post in the NOW section detailing wind speed and pressure fall at the Aspermont mesonet site. Wife was taking the picture of rapidly rotating dust and reported a funnel aloft as I drove. Dust from both the RFD and inflow began to obscure the tornado, which was also full of dust. As soon as I could, I posted on NOW that the tornado could be wrapped in dust, other than the dust in the tornado, as it approached Haskell County to the east. Pretty nice red devil in Aspermont!

If anyone knows the link to report severe weather to the SPC, please remind me. I cannot seem to find it and I do not see a report of the Aspermont tornado online. NWS/NOAA needs this info for verfication.

Thanks!

 

[cedwards]

We were on the Tulia storm. Whe stopped to watch it from 5 miles south of Silverton. THere was a nice gustnado to the south of the meso briefly, then a tornado came down in the center of the wall cloud for a couple of seconds. this was a thin rope tornado that condensed all the way down. After that, in the same area, there was a susspicious area with some dust on the ground and a funnel like feature extending down towards it. I could not confirm, from my location if the dust was rotating or was just more RFD dust ahead of the wall cloud.

 

[Andrew Stoller]

I got on the supercell near Pueblo, CO. It started out with a lot of precipitation and ping pong ball sized hail and then did a left split. The right moving split briefly organized with decent structure - nice meso with a vaulted area, big beaver tail, and tried several times to develop a wall cloud and tail cloud. After roughly 15 minutes, the inflow/area east of the storm felt very cold and the storm dissintegrated within 30 minutes.

I tried to make it to the Springfield monster but ended up on a really bad dirt road and called off the chase.

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

I watched the first storms out of the Denver Metro area fail, then waited patiently for the next wave, teetering between racing South and shooting lightning on the backside of ongoing storms, I positioned myself Just North of Limon, leaving both options in play. I could visually see storms strengthening to my NW, though without data and a nowcaster, I had no idea if one was better than the other, the Northern one (near Fort Morgan) was hard to see much detail, despite it only being 30 miles to my North, however the Southern one looked Great, with amazing structure and a nice lowering. After battling a flat tire, some pure mud and washed out roads (rained much up here lately? so much for the High Plains drought), I finally got right up underneath it. I was towards the end of my core punch when I swore it was producing under neath a half way condensed funnel, but I can't confirm that as I was battling mud and not filming, and so far I haven't seen anything from anyone else. The storm continued to chug along with strong LL rotation and produced many funnels, one a thin rope that stretched about half way down, it too could have touched down but I couldn't tell with the hill I had in my way. I've yet to upload any pictures, but I did upload a little bit of the video I shot, not bad for a 68 degree temperature...

Sorry I forgot to mute the time lapse, a lot less annoying if you just watch it in Mute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrmm8HyPOD4

 

[Eric Treece]

Target area was pretty much all of Eastern CO and we started out the day near Bennett. A storm fired NW of Denver and seemed to be the only action occurring. We headed up toward Prospect Valley and then east to watch the storms progression. After the short wave went thru storms blew up all along the front range and Palmer Divide. As our storm approached Wiggins it started becoming more and more surface based and a really nice wall cloud formed. It spun out a few funnels and as I was on the phone with NWS Boulder one (funnel #2) of them ever so briefly kicked up a patch of dust on the ground.......long enough for me to say "tornado, wait, the funnel is roping out." I guess it is better than a kick in the teeth. The storm never really could get its act together. There was always rotation with it, but it never could tighten up enough. After the core passed us it dumped rain and pea sized hail for some time. We got into some minor flooding N of Snyder, CO. Another storm formed off this ones rear flank and we pursued it for a while near dark. Again we witnessed a broad area of rotation, but it never could tighten up enough.

Funnel #1 near Wiggins, CO

Funnel #2 shortly before it very BRIEFLY touched down.

 

[Sam Barricklow]

Supercell and Funnel near Rule, Texas

Our initial target was southwest Oklahoma, with thoughts of going north to I-40 near Elk City. The Floyd County storm changed our plans. We first intercepted the storm on highway 82 west of highway 6. We raced south to a point east of Rule, near the intersection of highway 380 and, if memory serves me correctly, Ranch Road 2407. The storm was in an HP configuration, with a large dusty mesocyclone. It appeared that smaller scale rotating updrafts were migrating up the eastern side of the meso, perhaps headed toward the larger scale meso at the north end of the large updraft base. Here's a look to the west down highway 380:

Here's a funnel that formed along the inflow / outflow interface a few miles east of Rule.

And another photo of the funnel, zoomed in a bit:

The storm produced an impressive lightning barrage about this time. Later today, I'll post a few more photos and video freeze frames at:

http://www.k5kj.net/20090613.htm

We stopped at Ray's Spanish Restaurant in Breckenridge for an excellent meal. While eating supper, the weak line trailing the large storm intensified, producing anvil crawlers, zits and brilliant CGs.

 

[Eugene Thieszen]

Tulia - Silverton Storm

Eric Sipes, Walt Gish and I were on the Silverton storm. Our original target was in the Canyon area (a conclusion we began to doubt when we saw the earlier storm go up SE of Plainview.) However we held to our earlier read of the data and picked up the storm SW of Happy as it began to gain strength.

The storm looked very ugly at times with a large wall cloud, but for the most part tornado-wise its bark was worse than its bite. From a vantage point a couple of miles S of Silverton at about 6:27pm saw a very brief rope tornado that condensed all the way - but was so brief that if anyone had sneezed they would have missed it. Did get one shot of it about half-way down as it was weakening. It was enough to motivate Silverton to set off its sirens however.

About five minutes later a large bulbous funnel developed and it stirred up some dust under it, but the rotation on the ground was so weak I would hesitate to call it a tornado.

The storm died quickly as we made our way off the caprock toward's Quitaque.

Gene
WXtreme Chase Team

Links to a couple of pics:

The ropey tornado WSW of Silverton
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=20279&l=04daf49e7c&id=1795142262

The bulbous funnel with some dust under it a few minutes later
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=20278&l=7874ddc5c4&id=1795142262

 

[Bill Tabor]

Chase raced north in convoy with Tony Cook and his friend John. We managed to pull up north of Aspermont, Tx just as the storm inflow, rainfree base and wallcloud approached from the wnw. Here I saw what appeared to be one weak vortice with dust below. As it neared the RFD began blowing and the most god awful huge wave of dust and dirt began heading toward us. I waited until it was only a hundred yards away or so before punching south. Tony delayed a moment and got swallowed. The area of dust increased in size and tornado warning was issued as I exited east of Aspermont. Racing east to stay out of the dust I continued through Sagerton with the dust still coming and then to just west of Stamford. Here looking north I first observed a maroon colored cloud in the distance toward Rule and thought it was odd. I took a picture. A couple dudes pulled up in a truck and I started explaining to them about the tornado warning. They guy says 'You mean like that' and pointing? It was the maroon cloud but diagonally above was a reddish funnel halfway to ground. I tried to get back to the car and snap a pic. It quickly began dissipating, then my camera wouldn't shoot. Not sure if it was the auto-focus issue or the low light. I eventually snapped off a couple but I think mostly after most of it had decayed. [Note was attempting to stream all of this most of the chase and succeeded at times.] Next we continued east of Stamford where about eventually the cell strengthened and produced a wallcloud. Next I saw another weak funnel emerge with dirt beneath briefly. I call it poor man's tornado #2. After it dissipated the wallcloud enlarged and then the whole thing pulled up a bunch of black dirt lifting it all the way from ground to wallcloud base. I wondered if it was a tornado, but I could see no 'violent' motion in the dust. Perhaps it had been obscured. Additionally perhaps earlier Rule tornadoes had been obscured as well. After this the cell weakened.

Reports of 100 mph wind 3 ne of Aspermont. Reports of very high wind in the larger area as well. Locals were talking of damage near Rule. Makes me wonder what was obscured by the initial incredibly huge dust wave. It was an event just to see it. Tony lived and breathed in it. He was dust chasing . Hate to see what his air filter looks like now.

Oh, ps then KTEX (the abilene tv station) called me and I answered some questions about the storm on the air. Pics later. Hope everyone enjoyed the storm.

 

[Ric Burney]

I started out heading to the Texas panhandle Saturday afternoon but the cell around the Aspermont area looked too good to pass up:
http://www.geocities.com/numist/wx06132009.html

 

[Steve Miller TX]

Around Plainview, TX.

 

[Sam Barricklow]

June 13, 2009 - HP Supercell East of Rule, Texas

I posted a few video clips on YouTube from the June 13, 2009 HP supercell shot along highway 380 between Rule and Haskell, Texas.

Click here to view the video