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2014-06-01 REPORTS: CO/KS

Joined
May 18, 2004
Messages
285
Location
Centennial, CO
Pretty cool first chase day...Chased a supercell along the CO/KS border that ended up with the most bizarre RFD I've seen: the RFD was a pronounced gust front that actually resulted in a pretty spectacular dust storm. The dust storm wrapped around the mesocyclone producing gustnado eddies that swirled up as high as the mesocyclone. The cell started near Kit Carson, CO, and finally merged with a line of storms near Ulysses, KS, before dying. All of these images were markedly enhanced to show the dynamics of the storm.

Dustdevil.jpgDustdevils.jpgDuststorm RFD.jpgGusty RFD.jpgRFD Dustup.jpg
 
Quick note: it took a while before I was okay with the taxonomy of "gustnadoes" since these looked like eddies generated away from the initial gustfront. But, after much offline discussion, they're gustnadoes, not dust devils :)
 
Chased south central NE and northeast KS. Saw a funnel near Cuba, KS which may have briefly touched down but I was unable to tell for sure.
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Started our chase in Colby, KS where some initially promising updrafts quickly fizzled. We were torn between pursuing storms further to our east that were already getting away, or hanging back and waiting for west-central Kansas to develop. In the end, we chose the latter and eventually wound up under a severe-warned storm south of Gove City. Conditions were pretty brown and gloomy under the thick anvil and amongst the drought-browned prairie. We did see some high-based rotation early on, but cells quickly congealed - choking it off. Like others mentioned, gustnadoes were out in force along the multiple outflow boundaries. We had lots of fun playing around in the cold, dusty outflow and ended up being treated to a glorious mammatus display at sunset near Lacrosse.

Watch video >
 
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