2014-05-22 REPORTS: CO, KS, WY, TX, NM

[Dan Robinson]

Video from May 21-22:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf7ZxJuQWoY

Some temporary images posted:
https://www.facebook.com/stormhighwaycom

GPS track:
http://stormhighway.com/2014/may20-23.php

7-frame pano from Cheyenne Wells:


Chase Account: I was not impressed with this day's potential, so I put priority on visiting with friends in Denver and Colorado Springs. I arrived at Limon by late afternoon, and paused for a while trying to decide on continuing east or going back toward Denver to look at the storm east of the metro. The Denver storm increasingly looked like garbage, along with flash flooding and chaser crowds - so I chose to move east to position ahead of a new line of storms developing around Kit Carson.

I passed through the precip cores of this linear complex, also mainly garbage - aside from the vivid lightning show. I was generally not successful in capturing good video any of the many close CGs. I pulled far ahead of this line, now presenting a strong gust front with blowing dust under a nice striated shelf cloud near Cheyenne Wells. There is a 7-frame panorama I put together of this scene linked above.

This activity slowly lost its appeal, with a broad area of steady rain out ahead killing any chance to stop and shoot the nice lightning show. I ended the day at Goodland as the storms moved over, at that point with mostly invisible in-cloud lightning and heavy rain.

 

[Scott Sims]

PASTED ACCOUNT FROM MY YOUTUBE DESCRIPTION:

Having done the Denver Cyclone chase the day before, I was in the dilemma of staying out west for another day or two of sub-par storms along the front range, or hedging my bets towards home(Illinois) and chasing a less robust setup along the way.

A morning MCS had left an outflow boundary north and east of Wichita, and the HRRR model wanted to re-fire a small cluster of showers travelling through central KS along that boundary. It showed a cell becoming dominant and turning right, so I thought with some enhanced helicities and decent CAPE, maybe it could be interesting even with little upper level support.

Turned out to be a fairly nice cell and also cooperated in that chasing the cell was taking me closer to my normal route home from the area (US 166 to Baxter Springs/I-44). Another big win on subtle setups for the HRRR this season.

There was one report of a tornado from the storm near El Dorado(mis-labeled as Emporia in my video). I only saw a small rope funnel(mid-video), but perhaps the tornado was already over, or I missed it. Otherwise, it was nice to have a supercell in Kansas all to myself, as all the other chasers were in CO or NM. I followed the cell from just east of McPherson to about Fredonia,KS then headed home.

I try really hard not to gripe about chaser convergence really, because I think if you want less crowds, just don't go so the rest of us can benefit (snark )... it's how modern chasing is, so get used to it. However, I'll say it was cool to have my pick of viewing spots not filled by tour vans, DOWs and antenna covered SUVs. It was kind of eerie and odd though compared to a normal Kansas supercell... kind of like a baseball game at an empty stadium, it just missed part of the feel.

Watch video >

 

[Skip Talbot]

Brindley and I hung out near the Denver airport with Brad Goddard watching a neat little LP supercell twisting away in the distance, waiting for it to come to us. The tiny cell went tornado warned and they even sounded the sirens at the airport. We didn't see anything tornadic, however, and the storm soon died, leaving an orphaned anvil while the rest of the nearby cells quickly morphed into outflowy clusters. Full log, map, photos and stats:

http://skip.cc/chase/140522/

Photography is courtesy Jennifer Brindley Ubl