2023-06-23 REPORTS: CO/KS/WY/NE

[C.D. Burke]

tl;dr saw twister sisters (!!) in far southeastern Colorado on a marvelous chase day overall.

Started the day in Tucumcari, near where the previous day’s chase had finished with a picturesque sunset mothership supercell overtop of Logan—not a tornado-producer but a positive enough start to this three-day chase, likely my only one of the year.

Thursday night I had gone to sleep assuming I would chase the TX Panhandle the next day, but upon checking the models Friday morning I began to reconsider. The SPC was assigning *zero* tornadic risk to the entire region and focusing all its attention on Wyoming. The Panhandle itself was forecast to have a linear MCS. So Panhandle out, Wyoming too far away … what about eastern CO/western KS? I couldn’t help but notice that the CAMs were all unified (and had been so for several runs) in having discrete cells fire in eastern CO and strengthen as they arced east-southeastward into southwestern KS. I ran a “does this make sense?” check against the NAM's forecasted parameters and everything checked out: there was a priapic plume of rich moisture inserting itself into southwest KS about as far as the CO border, a modest dryline shaping up on the CO side, forecast bulk shear in the 40-55kt range, ample CAPE from daytime heating, classic elongated hodographs all over, with slow storm motion (10-15 kts) the icing on the cake. The models were all fairly consistent with each other: I sampled the forecast soundings from one point northwest of Plains, KS for 00z and found that each sounding model on the Pivotal site suggested a TOR or MRGL TOR hazard.

So it was CAM, NAM, thank you ma’am, and I was on my way to Springfield, CO as soon as I could pack up—a very straightforward decision. The only curious part was that the SPC was completely ignoring this region … in their midday update they finally extended a 2% risk to it, but it was satisfying to have read the tea leaves a few hours ahead of them.



What turned out to be the storm of the day had already farted into life just west of Lamar by the time I reached the area; the first dirt road I parked on had Brandon Ivey’s tour group at it, adding to the growing sense that maybe I wasn’t completely clueless after all. The storm cycled and split as we were standing there, sometimes with warm inflow at our backs and sometimes with outflow-driven dust in our faces, and eventually it began to hail so it was time to stair-step south and east. I scooted rather farther south than I wanted to, because of my personal rule about only cutting in front of storms using paved roads or known dirt roads (I’d never been here and didn’t know whether to trust this dirt road network ... turns out most of it is fine), and while I was still 8 minutes or so from reuniting with the cell, the first spotter report came in of a cone tornado on the ground, about 12 miles south of Holly. “Oh darn,” I said to myself, or something along those lines, fearing that I might have driven all this way only to miss a High Plains Spectacular by passing up perfectly good road options. But my fears were put to rest once I arrived on the scene, because the tornado was still going: a tall, rain-free stovepipe visible for what felt like a dozen miles around. It was the scene everyone dreams of: a photogenic twister whirling around a lonesome field, barely moving, far from any structures but close enough to the road network, and moreover staying on the ground for a long time! I don’t know where to look these things up, but this tornado must have been on the ground for at least 15 minutes, if it was on the ground from the time of the first spotter report until I got close enough to see it with my own eyes.



One of the many remarkable things about this storm was the low number of chasers—I did not see more than 10 vehicles in position on the cell at this point. I was free to move in closer down a dirt road without worrying about finding shoulder parking, ruining photographers' shots, etc. I ended up with a wonderful unobstructed view of the stovepipe, which was enough of a treat, but about two minutes into filming it, I realized we had sisters! A weak rope tornado dropped from a separate area of rotation to the east-southeast, closer to me, and stayed down for approximately 30 seconds. I don’t carry any photo equipment, but I was able to get both in the shot of the video I was taking on my phone.



Tornado 1 held on impressively even after appearing to rope out on a couple of different occasions, and when it finally disappeared for good I repositioned east-southeast again, across the border into Kansas using the dirt road network this time. For a time I was far enough south to look up and get a glorious view of the sunlit southern edge of the supercell, then I moved back in to get closer to the rotation. I ended up parking at the same spot as the tour van again, where we oohed and aahed at the rotation almost directly above our heads, but nothing came down. Dust was increasingly problematic at this point—it felt to me like unless you were practically in a position to reach out and touch a tornado, you would never really be able to positively ID one. Several spotter reports came in over the next 15 minutes of “dust-wrapped” or “dusty” tornadoes, but even though I was within three miles each time I can’t say I saw any of these. At one point I caught a poorly-contrasted cone-shaped funnel through the dust that didn’t appear to be making ground contact, but that was the closest I came. The sun set with tornado sirens wailing over Ulysses but the storm clearly deflating. A truly excellent day—even if I chased a lot more than I do, I'm not sure I would experience this this combination of storm quality, "catchability" (good road network and slow tracking) and chaser scarcity for a long time, if ever.


Stepped down far enough to get out of the dust and catch some blue sky


Rotation overhead

 

[sdienst]

Great catch C.D. I was there too and basically repositioning when the tornado first touched down. Was able to catch the last 15 minutes or so with pretty good video.

 

[Dave C]

Kind of wish I went with the SE CO option myself. I agree that surface observations and even CAMs were consistent on several areas of possible tornado producing storms that it seems SPC and others were slow on.

I was hesitating on the WY target until I was sure that cloud cover was not an issue like the previous Wednesday, and that dews were not mixing out, temperature was changing upward over time, etc. In that region, off Laramie range, initiation takes no forcing at all, so I was not worried there would be storms, just timing and how many. Would they be discrete?

The stalled stationary / mild warm front sold me as it was oriented favorably west to east with storms initiating and steering winds pushing them into more favorably backed winds. The decision was made, and so I made the drive to Chugwater and arrived before the main horde.

Initiation happened right when the circus was starting to arrive, so I got about ten miles east of that mess so I could find a nice place to hide and enjoy this storm without a lot of the stupidity. Managed to find dirt road NE of Chugwater, about halfway to Hawk Springs (road 38 I believe) giving me a fantastic view of the approaching cell. I only saw two other chasers and one farmer on the dirt roads for over an hour I was on them. The road network had a lot of gaps, so it was either sit on paved 313 with the clown show, or accept what you could find of dry dirt.

I may have been stationed a bit further away that I would prefer due to positioning options and choices, but I really needed a break from the conga line BS for once. I like to get structure in my shots anyway, as extreme closeups of some tornadoes can actually be quite boring, depending on the particular storm. I also loved the view of the storm hovering over the beautiful bluffs in the area. Rare to see photogenic storms over photogenic landscapes. The storm was quite predictable and classic from birth, with fairly explosive growth, and as soon as it entered the higher CAPE and more favorable backing winds, higher dews, etc. to the east it started ramping up in lightning and organizing its base. Echo tops were 54k feet and showed two dueling updrafts finally resolve after a left split of the weaker one. Motion then began to be strongly right moving from the mean on the dominant updraft, as expected due to the front and the weak low in the area. The storm basically rode down the front for the next two hours with nice slow storm motion of 15-20 knots or less.

Perhaps a half hour passed from birth, and a stout wall cloud had formed. Soon, the storm became a tornado producing machine, and put down half a dozen tornadoes between Chugwater to Scottsbluff, everything from cones to needles, to a stovepipe. I probably missed the very first one in the nice southern light the main crowd was seeing off paved 313, and another one later repositioning. Contrast on a couple of the last tornadoes was very bad and the storm had moved much more north than good road options and became rain wrapped so those images not included here. The storm effectively died over Scottsbluff with an exceptionally menacing wall cloud that probably caused the tornado emergency warning (PDS) to be issued out of caution. There was evidence of weak circulation under parts of the final wall cloud with long tendrils of dust pulling into it. Eventually the rain and hail core interfered with the wall cloud and the storm seemed to be done tornadoing and slowly losing strength. Other cells started forming and an MCS began to fill in. As far as I know, only minor injuries and structure / vehicle damage occured (a few cars and a truck flipped over, etc) as a result of this storm. Hoping all are ok.

I was just thrilled to be on the plains for only the 3rd attempt and 4th tank of gas this year, and far away from the hook surfer circus, and breathng in fresh storm air and having the immediate area all to myself. I traded a couple miles of better proximity for the experience I needed, one of peace and awe.
















From what I can tell, there were three distinct areas of tornadic storms across 4 states that all were surprisingly productive and decent storm environments compared to what we have had to work with in muc of 2023. Hoping for 1 or 2 more days like this to sneak in somewhere before we get too far into summer. Too many days the last couple seasons have been ruined by morning crapvection or other irritations, so it sure felt good to get a win and an experience like the ones that got me hooked on this hobby years ago.

 

[Tony Laubach]

Not going to be as detailed here as I was for my June 21 post... and I hate to admit it, coming in hot after Akron, this fantastic day, just felt kinda meh. A seven-tornado day on the high plains, with several photogenic tubes on a slow moving cyclic supercell would've been a season-maker any year. But two days after Akron (the day before this on the Highlands Ranch tornado), I still hadn't really processed the Akron day, so my mind was still very much on that. Still, an awesome day up here none-the-less.

Got to Chugwater, waited for the storm to initiate, when it did, played around in the early hail near Slater, then rolled slowly back south on I-25 to Chugwater. I actually got off at WY-231 north of Chugwater which leads into town along the interstate. Shortly after heading south, I ended up in the RFD, possibly the initial tornadic circulation of the first tornado as I drove through and had the roof "pop" on my vehicle with a bout of pretty hardy winds. Shortly after, I observed the funnel/tornado itself, but got no imagery as I was making the turn onto WY-313 and had various stuff in my way (reminds me of the Robin Williams "Inventing Golf" sketch) "*BLEEP* NO, I PUT $H!T IN THE WAY"

From there, it was better, I had a good view of the second tornado east of Chugwater.



The third tornado, I had banked east all the way to US-85 south of Hawk Springs as the traffic was getting a little much (behaved, but a little much). Fortunately I still had a view west and was able to put that tornado live on the AccuWeather network, my second tornado in three days to go live.



I should've hung around here, but again, wanting to stay somewhat ahead of the congo line, I headed east. Forgive the caption in the picture, this was the Hawk Springs tornado looking west somewhere near the WY/NE line on WY-151 east of La Grange. This was tornado #4



Further down the line, this time in Nebraska, I took a very low contrast shot from somewhere just east of the NE border. I saw it in the distance and had the wherewithal to take a photo I could later enhance. This was tornado #5



Tornado #6 I think was my favorite of the day, I just enjoyed the open terrain, kinda mountainy, and I was able to get a good ways north on Stegal Road to line up with it. I was hoping it would hold out and cross the road in front of me, but I settled for the nice rope out.



Then came Gering/Scottsbluff... I'll save my soapbox on the "tornado emergency". But I rolled into Gering on NE-71, slicing a gnarly RFD, which on its own would've supported a pretty stout situation, but alas, when I pushed through, all I was greeted with was a lowering, no tornado (very fortunately). Still, the core was coming, and wrapping around that circulation (which was very well present despite the lack of a tornado). I actually got a little concerned over monster hail, so I pushed west into town to allow me an opportunity to cover the car. When I did, I got some golfballs, and a look at the developing tornado east of town.



Since the hail wasn't big enough for concern, I shot back east to get around in front of this. I got on US-26 near Minatare and enjoyed the beautiful rope-out of this thing.



Initially I had six in the books, but after the survey was conducted by Cheyenne NWS, I may have counted two tornadoes as one (The Hawk Springs EF-2 and the EF-1 immediately after). I'll have to double-check my time codes to see if that is indeed the case. But either way, I managed to capture all but one I saw (that one I experienced, so I'll take it).

Hindsight being what it is, I would've rather played the Colorado target (and I gave it consideration, but I was on the docket to work the Iowa event and Colorado would've put me out of range for that). Not that I would've liked that any better (perhaps lesser crowds would've allowed me closer plays than I did). But seeing as Iowa didn't turn out and I had ZERO intention of being in Indiana, it would've worked out fine and I'd have been home a day earlier with another home-state win under my belt.

It really was a fantastic chase day... but I was definitely riding the high over Akron still, and it was hard to psyche myself up for this. Trust me, I was thrilled, but I would've been fine missing it to let Akron soak in a bit better. I chased Iowa (or basically drove to Des Moines and halfway back home) the following day; the long season plus Akron still lingering, I was ready for a break, so happy to be home for a week to celebrate my best chase and recharge the batteries.

 

[Evan B]

To begin, I was fairly confident I was going to chase on the 23rd the night before, I just wasn't sure where. The morning of the 23rd I checked the model runs and mesoanalysis and pretty quickly settled on a target area near Chugwater, WY, as it was fairly close and looked to have a good parameter space with easily manageable storm motions. I got to Chugwater at about 2:20pm local time and topped off my tank before heading a few miles east of town to clear the growing chaser congregation in town. After the target storm really began to gain some strength I moved a few additional miles east to get a better vantage and to move further away from the worst areas of chaser convergence. Observing from this location, I watched the first tornado form and quickly dissipate perhaps only a couple of seconds later.



After staying at that location and watching the fairly strong rotation for a few more minutes, I moved further east yet again to reposition ahead of the storm and inevitable chaser conga line. At this location I was able to observe 2 more tornadoes. The first I was able to film for a few minutes and had intermittent ground contact.



The second tornado from this location was more brief but I was able to gather a dozen or so photos through its life.



After moving east again I observed another tornado which was initially a very picturesque stovepipe. Unfortunately I had to run back to my car to get my camera. By the time I was able to get a picture it was no longer fully condensed.



Seeing the incoming chaser line I quickly packed up shop and drove a couple miles east of La Grange where I saw my final tornado of the day emerge from the precipitation.



Overall a very good chase day and it definitely helped restore some of my confidence and improve my mood after disappointingly missing the 06/21/23 Akron tornadoes and only having a murky (at best) shot of the Highlands Ranch tornado from the day prior.

 

[Jeff Wright]

The storm gods love you.

That last image is spooky

 

[cdcollura]

Good day all, this is my reports forJune 23, 2023 in Wyoming (and Nebraska)...

Summary: June 23 was one heck of a chase day from SE Wyoming and eastward into western Nebraska, with at least 7 tornadoes intercepted. The SPC had an enhanced-risk for the target area, mainly in the SE Wyoming area, with a well-chosen target of Chugwater. Tornado probability was 5%, with hail and wind both 30%, and hatched for significant. The plan of the day was to play the southern portions of the major risk area(s). I left Colorado Springs via I-25 north, past Denver, and reached Cheyenne, Wyoming by early afternoon, stopping there for lunch. I continued north past Cheyenne and reached Chugwater, and waited with many other storm chasers (including Dan Shaw, Tony Laubach, and Rodger Hill to name a few) at a gas station east of I-25 and along SR 313. By mid to late afternoon, the SPC issued mesoscale discussion 1220, followed by tornado watch box 362, valid until 9 PM MDT. Convective initiation ensued by late afternoon just west of Chugwater and became a powerful cyclic tornadic supercell that was followed from East of Chugwater along SR 313, to northwest of La Grange by Highway 85, and eastward north of SR 88 and near Scottsbluff, Nebraska near SR 71 north and Highway 26 eastward to near Highway 83. This cyclic supercell produced at least 7 tornadoes, most of which were highly photogenic and / or significant. The chase was wrapped up after dark at the intersection of Highway 385 and SR 62a. I continued south on Highway 385 and reached Highway 26, and took that east and southeast (through more severe storms) to near Ogallala, grabbing food and fuel there. I continued east on I-80, and spent the night (sleeping in the car) at a rest-stop west of Kearney, Nebraska. Unfortunately, for some reason, there were NO hotel rooms available anywhere along or near this section on I-80,except for one "budget" motel I used to stay at for under $60, that was $350 tonight (what is going on here)?

Full online chase log for 2023 (including this one) can be found here: www.sky-chaser.com/mwcl2023.htm

Details (on June 23)...

1). June 23, 6:00 PM - Observation and indirect penetration of an extremely severe and tornadic thunderstorm from near Chugwater, Wyoming and I-25 / SR 313 in Platte and eastward across Goshen County near Lagrange and Highway 85, and eastward near Scottsbluff, Nebraska to Highways 26 and 285 in Morill County. This storm was a cyclic classic to HP supercell storm along a long track. At least 7 tornadoes were observed with this storm, most of which were significant and photogenic. The supercell storm also had a striking visual appearance ("mother-ship" and / or "stacked plates" appearance) with impressive striations and RFD cut, in addition to some highly-visible tornadoes. One of these larger tornadoes was observed at close range, particularly near Hawk Springs, Wyoming to the northwest of La Grange on Highway 85. In addition to the tornadoes, inflow and / or RFD winds were noted exceeding 80 MPH at times, along with 2 to 3 inch hail on the edge of the storm core (not directly penetrated), frequent lightning, and very heavy, horizontal rains. Fortunately these tornadoes remained over rural areas and / or missed any major towns. Trees and power lines were noted blowing down close to one of the larger tornadoes. Thee tornadoes ranged from elephant trunk / stove-pipe, to multi-vortex rain-wrapped wedge type (noted looking north from SR 88 between La Grange and Gering looking north before occlusion and rope-out. Conditions causing the storms were surface heating, a low pressure trough, up-slope wind flow, dryline / surface boundary interactions, and an upper trough. Documentation was digital stills, audio, and HD video (including time-lapse). A 2022 Jeep Renegade was used to chase the storm. A tornado watch was valid for the area until 9 PM MDT.

2). June 23, 10:30 PM - Penetration of strong and severe thunderstorms along Highway 26 from near Bridgeport in Morill County, Nebraska to east of Ogallala on I-80 in Keith County. These storms were part of a multi-cell cluster of strong and severe storms. Nearly continuous lightning was encountered while penetrating this MCS, along with torrential rains, small hail, and winds gusting near 60 MPH. Conditions causing the storms were surface heating, a low pressure trough, outflow boundary interactions, and an upper trough. Documentation was digital stills and HD video. A 2022 Jeep Renegade was used to chase the storm. A tornado watch was valid for the area until 1 PM CDT the following day.




Above: This an annotated visible satellite image at roughly 1z (early evening) on June 23, 2023 showing the synoptic environment. A cyclic tornadic supercell is moving from SE Wyoming into western Nebraska.



Above: This is a radar image (base reflectivity) of a tornadic HP supercell over Goshen County, Wyoming at just before 6 PM MDT during the early evening of June 23. This cyclic storm was in the midst of producing multiple tornadoes. The velocity is in the upper-left inset.



Above: Beautiful second tornado looking north on a farm road north of SR 313 in Goshen County, Wyoming. This will rope out quickly and another "cycle" of the supercell will "hand-off" to a new mesocyclone to the east.



Above: Wide view of a fourth tornado over Goshen County, Wyoming west of Hawk Springs and north of SR 313. The view is to the west and northwest.



Above: View of sixth (or seventh) tornado to the right side of this picture. The view is northeast from between Scotts Bluff and Gering along SR 71.