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2015-05-23 REPORTS: TX, OK, KS, CO, NE

JamesCaruso

Staff member
Joined
Jul 5, 2009
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2,013
Location
Newtown, Pennsylvania
Targeted southeast CO today; you can read about my indecisiveness and second-guessing in the Events thread

After lunch in Lamar, had the general intention to head west and north, maybe toward Limon, but rather than go north first (which would have been a shorter route to Limon, because 287 heads directly northwest out of Kit Carson), wanted to go west first and buy some time erring to the south, as winds were more backed than to the north. It was early though; figured winds would still back up toward Limon and that upslope would be enhanced by the Palmer Divide. Heading west first proved to be a good decision because we came upon a severe warned cell coming up out of Pueblo. A tornado warning was soon issued. The attached photo and radar image were at approximately 1:36 MDT while on Route 350 just southwest of La Junta.

There was a tornado report at 1:52 MDT but we did not see anything. We were a little further away at that point as we were repositioning to stay with the storm's northeast motion, but still had a view of the base. I can't imagine it was more than a brief spin-up if it was legitimate at all (no source was identified).

We tried to head north out of La Junta, cross the river and use route 194, which is on the north side of the river and paralleling route 50 - but the road was closed - so we had to backtrack to route 50. By then, a ton of chasers had come out of nowhere, and the road got a little crazy with everyone pulling off and pulling back on the road. The base was just getting further away to the northeast so we just wanted to keep moving east and get to the next north road, which was past Las Animas. We went north on 14 and then east on 96 to Eads but by now it was just a line. Still provided a couple of nice photo ops until we decided to let the line pass us as we drove back south to Lamar. Today's chase started early and ended early.
 

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Started the day heading to La Junta after sleeping in Limon. Couple convective showers along I-25 were moving into unstable airmass. Upon arrival we could see a cluster of storms with supercellular structure to our SW moving NE. One was a little bit more discrete, just splitted and was headed our way, interception was simple since we only needed to move South of the town.

Could see the whole cycle and caught a brief spin-up underneath a funnel, lasted for about 1 minute.

Then we could follow with the meso NE where it became somewhat HP and embedded with into linear storms. Several circulations followed only to get wrapped and undercut by outflow. This happened maybe 3 or 4 times.

Then using dirt roads we could manage to get North of the meso so it doesn't get hidden by wet RFD and we got some additionnal spin-ups on the ground, one lasted a good 2-3 minutes but was weak. We didn't bother report since was in open field and weak. This was SW of Cheyenne Wells and when we got into town sirenes were going off so I suppose someone reported something with it! After that NE of town cell merger turned dirt roads into mud and we decided to call it night.

Was a fun chase, no fully condensed tornado but spin-ups are better than all the HPs structures I got since the beginning of my chasecations.

First video from SW La Junta

Second video from SW Cheyenne Wells
 
Targeted southeast CO today; you can read about my indecisiveness and second-guessing in the Events thread

After lunch in Lamar, had the general intention to head west and north, maybe toward Limon, but rather than go north first (which would have been a shorter route to Limon, because 287 heads directly northwest out of Kit Carson), wanted to go west first and buy some time erring to the south, as winds were more backed than to the north. It was early though; figured winds would still back up toward Limon and that upslope would be enhanced by the Palmer Divide. Heading west first proved to be a good decision because we came upon a severe warned cell coming up out of Pueblo. A tornado warning was soon issued. The attached photo and radar image were at approximately 1:36 MDT while on Route 350 just southwest of La Junta.

There was a tornado report at 1:52 MDT but we did not see anything. We were a little further away at that point as we were repositioning to stay with the storm's northeast motion, but still had a view of the base. I can't imagine it was more than a brief spin-up if it was legitimate at all (no source was identified).

We tried to head north out of La Junta, cross the river and use route 194, which is on the north side of the river and paralleling route 50 - but the road was closed - so we had to backtrack to route 50. By then, a ton of chasers had come out of nowhere, and the road got a little crazy with everyone pulling off and pulling back on the road. The base was just getting further away to the northeast so we just wanted to keep moving east and get to the next north road, which was past Las Animas. We went north on 14 and then east on 96 to Eads but by now it was just a line. Still provided a couple of nice photo ops until we decided to let the line pass us as we drove back south to Lamar. Today's chase started early and ended early.

On your image I see exactly where you were, actually the ground you see in front of you is a hill and hides most of the action. We had to move closer to highway 350 to actually see what was going on. Was not a big tornado anyways.
 
On your image I see exactly where you were, actually the ground you see in front of you is a hill and hides most of the action. We had to move closer to highway 350 to actually see what was going on. Was not a big tornado anyways.

Thanks JF, that makes me feel a *LITTLE* better But we were just off of 350 at that point the picture was taken, we had just turned off of 350 on one of those roads that heads north, and really were not that far away from 350 at all, so not sure it would have made much of a difference??
 
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