2014-06-06 MISC: CO

[Andrew Stoller]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMU6cISh2J4

Farily impressive; I couldn't chase yesterday, but my target all day was north of the Raton Mesa in southeast CO; there was enough shear from the passing shortwave, and a front was stalled north of the Mesa. That combination with easterly upslope flow got this little cell rotating like crazy. On radar, it hardly looked impressive, but the visible results certainly were! Looks supercellular and not landspoutish.

 

[Stan Rose]

I chased yesterday, and now I will cry myself to sleep for the next month or so, since I missed that tor by minutes. My plan was to blast south on I-25, but then at the last minute I changed my mind and headed east to La Junta, then south on 109 to Kim, thinking I would be better off being well ahead of the storm, I was convinced it would wait to get out farther east before intensifying. Of course, the opposite happened and by the time I blasted east to intercept it, the tornadic phase had just ended. Major bummer...Im cursed.

 

[Marcus Diaz]

*sigh* cry some more...

Watch video >

 

[JamesCaruso]

I regret missing that as well. Friday 06/06/14 was "lame duck day" for us, as we needed to get to Denver that night for flights home on Saturday. We began the day in Lamar, and although I believed that any storms that formed in upslope flow would be in a more favorable environment in southeast CO than in the Palmer Divide region, we were biased toward the Palmer Divide because it was closer to where we needed to be at the end of the day. I guess we were somewhat non-committal, not wanting to commit all the way down to Trinidad (and potentially end up in NM if storms moved southeast) and just waited (too long it turns out) to see where storms came off the mountains and which would get their act together as they moved onto the Plains. We had lunch in Lamar and by then the Trinidad storm was already tornado warned but, as was said above, did not look great on radar. By the time we got to La Junta, the radar images looked worse, the storm was in a bad road network, and additional storms were going up to the south that we thought had to be interfering. So we bagged it, decided to head north to the Limon mess to hope for a tail-end Charlie, then diverted to a new, isolated cell that popped east of Pueblo, and as both opportunities vaporized we called it a day and a trip. Stopped for a nice dinner in Colorado Springs and rolled into Denver at about 10:00 MDT. Now on the way home, and Stormchase 2014 is on the books!




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[John Farley]

I am wondering whether anyone who was on this storm has any thoughts on whether there were two tornadoes or three. I thought three, but I was pretty far away and others who were closer have had some disagreements on this point. There were definitely two large ones, but about five minutes before the second large one became visible, there was what appeared to be a brief tornado. Narrow funnel not fully condensed to the ground, but dust lifted underneath. No doubt this was a tornado; the question was whether or not it was a separate tornado or the beginning of the second large one. I have heard both opinions from other chasers who were on the storm. I thought separate, as I could see no evidence of anything down for at least three or four minutes between the small one and the second large one. But I was pretty far away, and there might have been a ground circulation not visible from that distance between the two times when something was definitely down, kind of like the Rozel situation last year. Opinions from anyone else who was there would be welcomed!