2014-06-05 REPORTS: SD/IA/CO

[Joe Zemek]

Oh no. Please, no: someone out there has to have at least one photograph of the incredible supercell that blew up over Sioux Falls, outside the RISK area, on Thursday, prompting a small Tornado Watch for SD/MN/IA as it moved ESE.

As the morning forecasts had little mention of severe for the area, I decided to spend another day with my cousins in Vermillion SD before heading to SW Kansas on Friday. This turned out to be the kind of day where enough elements were in place for a more experienced chaser than myself to recognize the real potential, & sure enough, an undetected mid level vort max showed up & triggered an amazing storm, of which I have no documentation, as I was in my cousin's car sans cameras, maps, or phone charger, & upon hearing the TOR warn less than an hour up I29, I decided against wasting precious time driving back to their house to get in my truck.

So, after a race up I29, exiting at HWY 11 heading east toward Canton, IA, successfully passing the storm & seeing a gorgeous tight structure transitioning to HP & obscuring one reported tornado (per LSR: 7 NW CANTON), I had only my very-low-battery smartphone, which REFUSED to take pictures on the grounds of its low battery state. "STUPID PHONE! TAKE THE PICTURES AND THEN GO TO SLEEP!" Sigh. Oh well, I can see it when I close my eyes. It was definitely the highlight of a hard-to-pinpoint-the-target-and-when-you-do-it's-cloud-obscured chase week.

My initial Google Imaging turns up no images of this storm. I sure hope they show up, because they will be amazing; reminiscent to me of 6/2/05 Colorado, but more compact & tight.

 

[John Farley]

Mods, can Colorado please be added to the thread title? Although the next day would be the big day around Trinidad, there were some pretty nice supercells around there on the 5th, too:

Chase log, including a couple additional pictures, at:

http://www.johnefarley.com/chase60514.htm

 

[StephenHenry]

Like John said, this was a pretty pleasant chase day on the Colorado high plains. We were actually on our way from Castle Rock back to Limon to see if we could distinguish any signs of the tornado path from the night before, guessing that it must have skimmed north of town. But this nice storm blew up on the Palmer Divide and caught our attention instead. We were easily able to stay just ahead of it as it lazily curved from an ESE to an SSE direction, becoming more and more outflow-ish as it did so. There were a couple hints at some high-based rotation, and we had hopes for a possible landspout or two, but we never saw any real organization in that department (actually there was a tornado report on this storm much later in the evening, but I never saw any confirmation on this). After deciding to let this first storm go, we sat around during sunset and got timelapse on some other weaker cells in the area. All in all, not a particularly intense day, but it was a refreshing change of pace after some hectic moments on 6/3 and 6/4.

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