• After witnessing the continued decrease of involvement in the SpotterNetwork staff in serving SN members with troubleshooting issues recently, I have unilaterally decided to terminate the relationship between SpotterNetwork's support and Stormtrack. I have witnessed multiple users unable to receive support weeks after initiating help threads on the forum. I find this lack of response from SpotterNetwork officials disappointing and a failure to hold up their end of the agreement that was made years ago, before I took over management of this site. In my opinion, having Stormtrack users sit and wait for so long to receive help on SpotterNetwork issues on the Stormtrack forums reflects poorly not only on SpotterNetwork, but on Stormtrack and (by association) me as well. Since the issue has not been satisfactorily addressed, I no longer wish for the Stormtrack forum to be associated with SpotterNetwork.

    I apologize to those who continue to have issues with the service and continue to see their issues left unaddressed. Please understand that the connection between ST and SN was put in place long before I had any say over it. But now that I am the "captain of this ship," it is within my right (nay, duty) to make adjustments as I see necessary. Ending this relationship is such an adjustment.

    For those who continue to need help, I recommend navigating a web browswer to SpotterNetwork's About page, and seeking the individuals listed on that page for all further inquiries about SpotterNetwork.

    From this moment forward, the SpotterNetwork sub-forum has been hidden/deleted and there will be no assurance that any SpotterNetwork issues brought up in any of Stormtrack's other sub-forums will be addressed. Do not rely on Stormtrack for help with SpotterNetwork issues.

    Sincerely, Jeff D.

2018-06-24 Reports: CO/NM/KS/OK/TX

John Farley

Supporter
Joined
Apr 1, 2004
Messages
1,937
Location
Pagosa Springs, CO
I tracked an intense supercell from just south of Trinidad, CO to near Des Moines, NM. Here is a picture of the storm in its early stages, as it formed a nice wall cloud southeast of Trinidad:

IMG_3894-e-fb.jpg
This picture was taken from east of Trinchera, looking west. With the storm moving toward me, I cut south from Branson, CO into NM, crossing (barely) ahead of the storm. This is when things got pretty interesting. In hail and barely ahead of the meso, I looked up through the windshield and saw this:

IMG_3899-e-fb.jpg
IMG_3902-e-fb.jpg
These photos were hastily taken through the windshield and passenger window - I was right in the path and way too close to stop. At the time I was sure it was a funnel cloud, maybe even a tornado given how low it appeared to extend, though I saw no ground circulation. However, a couple minutes later, when I was able to safely stop and look back, this is what I saw:

IMG_3903-e-fb.jpg

After some discussion with others, I am pretty sure that what was actually going on was some striations wrapping around the meso - but when I was nearly right underneath, my perspective made it look like the one I could see at the time was extending toward the ground more than it actually was.

In any case, I continued to track the storm southeast to Des Moines, NM as it produced up to 1.5 inch hail according to reports, as well as another pretty low wall cloud. Biggest hail I got in was around an inch, but I tried pretty hard to stay ahead of the hail.

Also saw a couple other interesting storms, including an earlier LP supercell that followed a similar track but slightly farther north, and a nice shelf cloud associated with a later storm northeast of Raton, NM. As usual, I will post a full report to my Web page as time permits, and will post a link here when I do.
 
Back
Top