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Congratulations to Scott and others who intercepted that tornado. I started in Garden City and headed west in a caravan of chasers. There were two possible targets including the Nebraska Panhandle/Wyoming and southeastern Colorado. I finally decided to head north to intercept expected convection moving off the mountains in Wyoming. Unfortunately, the convection didn't go as far south as I expected. I still could have intercepted Scott's storm as it moved into Nebraska but I had a major delay on 385 between Burlington and Idalia due to one of those one lane constructions zones with a pilot car. I really hate those. The lady with the sign stated there was another zone farther to the north on 385. I turned west and north but the damage was done. I reached Kimball, NE and decided I couldn't intercept the tornado-warned storm that was now in the northwestern Nebraska Panhandle. I called off the chase and am hoping for storms tomorrow assuming the cap isn't too strong.
I drove out to Guymon, Oklahoma today and busted hard. Blue skies everywhere lol. When I first arrived, there was some decent convergence along the dryline just west of Guymon, with towers trying to go up, but no dice. I did watch the storms go up over Amarillo, from way off in the distance. They even had nice overshooting tops for a short time before fizzling out. The cap was just too much for the southern target. That was my day. Just got back into Norman about 45 minutes ago. Weee!
Another Structure Heaven Day in the Texas Panhandle. Chase Target of Amarillo and dropped South to the Silverton LP Supercell that Crawled along at the end at 9mph LOL - No chance of Nados but nice all the same and took a few Baseballs in the mix
Great day in TX, a good structure day with large hail. We stayed on the storm that fired up late around 7:30pm near Claude, TX and followed it till she died. Managed to find 3.25" hail (measured) about 20 minutes after the storm had past, so they were probably a good 4" freshly fallen. Not a bad day overall.
Here's the storm near Claude, exploding and rotating updraft.
Some of the large hail we found after the storm had passed.
Smaller cell developed behind the first one, but never really got going.
Got on the storm SW of Groom, TX after traveling with Jay McCoy for the first part of the day. Got to photograph some incredible structure. What a day! I absolutely love TX Panhandle LP Supercells!!! Most shots from North of Clarendon looking west.
THE IMAGE BELOW IS MY FAVORITE SHOT OF THE DAY...MAYBE OF THE ENTIRE YEAR.
Image of the anvil of the dying LP supercell near Groom, TX
I targeted southeast Wyoming, left Ogallala late morning and headed for Torrington. RUC was showing southeast winds advecting lower 50s dewpoints all the way west to I-25 by late afternoon/early evening, so I made it a point to head west and not wait around. I've seen rapidly supercell-genesis happen before in this setup right along I-25 and I was thinking that this was going to be the case again. The edge of the lower 50s dewpoints was marked by the increased low level cumulus field... and with southeast winds 20-25 mph, this just continued to advance westward with pressure falls over south-central Wyoming/north-central Colorado. Once I saw some 35+ dbz echoes and some isolated CG flashes being plotted on GR3 and StormLab, I pushed west to I-25 corridor. An initial storm came off the mountains and promptly died as it reached I-25 between Wheatland and Chugwater, but there was continued development in the same general area of the Laramies, so it was just a matter of time. The best focus was pushing a little bit farther north, so north I went, reaching the Dwyer Junction north of Wheatland.
What followed was an awesome evolution from multiple, disorganized small bases scattered about... to full-fledged single supercell storm in the span of about 20-30 minutes. I was fortunate enough to have a wonderful view overlooking I-25 from the rest area at Dwyer Junction, watching a beautiful, compact wall cloud develop west of the interstate with the mountains in full view. Obviously, since this was coming straight for me, I had to bail at the onset of moderate precipitation. So I did just that, and as I was leaving the rest area parking lot, I received nickel size hail. Bigger stones were likely just west of me with the visual vault closing in. I bailed east. As I bailed east, not too long after I left, the rear-flank downdraft was really starting to mature. It probably wasn't too long after this time that Scott Weberpal saw the brief rope tornado. I never saw this feature since I was bailing in fear of giant hail given the green/aquamarine look to the vault bearing down. The supercell updraft was a cathedral and just looked like a beast just behind me. I made it a point to stop every few miles to get some wide angle shots of this supercell updraft. This was the best it looked, when it was west of Guernsey. After that, the supercell structure was never the same. I did notice the ominous wall cloud and possible funnel(s) northwest in the 5:30 to 5:45pm MDT time frame roughly, to the northwest of Ft. Laramie. The storm was moving into the dreaded no-road-network hole between Torrington and Lusk, so I had to either blast all the way to Mitchell and wait for it to arrive central Sioux County south of Agate, NE... or head north first, catch one more glimpse of the supercell rotating area as it passes by me to the north on Hwy 85.. and hopefully get lucky with photogenic structure and/or tornado... only to ultimately fall behind the storm as I drove to Lusk. I chose the latter. By choosing the latter, I followed a fairly beautiful rainbow on the backside of the smaller cell just northwest of the main storm. I reached Lusk and headed east, stopping a couple times to photograph a truncated full rainbow with Cb tops. According to my math, I would rendezvous with the main supercell again just east of Harrison. By this time, though, the storm was on a rather significant downward trend as I was nearing it again from the north... and getting cored... around the 7:15 to 7:30pm MDT time frame. All in all, very happy with the way things turned out early on getting those structure and wall cloud shots with the mountains in the background! I saw a bunch of chaser friends at the country kitchen in Chadron after the chase.
May 21 was probably the record-setting BUST for me. Congrats to anyone who made the storm in WY!
I left Oklahoma City at about 9 AM (obviously, this was already 2 hours later than I should have) after being in SE Texas on May 20. I targeted NE Colorado initially, as many did, but the favorable target kept shifting northward by the hour due to capping.
Above: To make matters worse - Much worse ... This BS above (as construction is a waste of time and money) on Highway 385 pretty much made sure I'd NEVER make it into Wyoming, unless I had an airplane. I actually had internet here, so I posted this to stormtrack (as I was waiting) in the thread in announcements so no one else has this problem here in CO!
The capping held, and all TCU was gone by 4 PM MDT, and all I got was a sunburned left forehead. The main lesson learned from this is that a forecasted target changes ... So don't get there right when expecting storms (always have a few hours buffer for adjustment / unexpected "suprises" as the pilot car / construction above).
Above: There "it" is ... I at least saw the supercell ... But I was over 150 miles away ;-(
Well unfortunately i am confined to an area east of the Mississippi but i still saw some great storms roll through in the early evening. Sorry, these aren't the best photos but i hope you like em anyways.
Some small towers shot up in Northern Kentucky about 3:30-ish. As they progressed north the cell at the back of the cluster went severe as it approached the Ohio river with a more favorable environment of better moisture and stronger shear. Later that same storm would go tornado warned in Highland County, OH. Here are some shots of the towers and a far off look from Ault Park.
Arrived at the Wyoming cell at around 5:30. Didn't see the reported tornado. The highlight of the day was probably the shower of golfballs it produced.
Caught the textbook structure supercell that drifted just north of Silverton, Texas. No tornadoes to report, but I got some great photos. Should have a time lapse later today/tonight.
I intercepted the tornado warned cell that moved through eastern WY, catching it near Fort Laramie. Great structure and amazing contrast on this storm. I lost the storm north of Torrington after hitting a mud road that I didn't want to get stuck in, which forced me to turn around. Here's a timelapse of my chase from the robotic camera dome:
I met up with Adam Lucio, Danny Neal, and Ben Holcomb and after stopping to watch the RFB north of Torrington, Ben started shrieking after almost stepping on what he initially thought was a rattlesnake coiled up next to Adam's door. Some locals came by and informed us it was a bullsnake and threw their hats over it saying the dark, cool cover would calm it down. I think they missed though, and managed to only piss him off further:
We chased the Lingle-Lusk storm on May 21, the first day of a 4 day chase vacation with my daughter. We left the night before from Flagstaff, AZ and made the mistake of driving (oozing) through the heart of Denver at lunch time. So we were playing catchup to reach the decent CAPE, shear, and frontal boundary setting up in southeast Wyoming. As we approached Cheyenne, radar showed cells getting healthy along I-25, further north near Wheatland. One cell pulled its act together and started peeling away to the east-northeast. In an attempt to parallel and get ahead from the south, we broke northeast on Hwy 85 toward Torrington and Lingle.
As we approached Torrington, the supercell dominated the sky to the north like a great hen roosting over her clutch with features gradually resolving along the base.
As we entered Torrington and headed toward Lingle on US-85, trees and buildings demolished our view, however, upon clearing some trees about 00Z, we got a sudden and stunning view of a wall cloud and what appeared to be a funnel silhouetted to the northwest. We were too far out to determine rotation, so at the time, all we could do was film it and see if we could catch up. My daughter's camera work was a little shaky while she was trying to find this feature, so I've just grabbed 3 of the best video frames below.
The SPC report later confirmed two tornado touchdowns northwest of Lingle at 23:55Z and 00:01Z. So I'm confident that the feature we saw was indeed a funnel--whether it was a tornado at the time we saw and filmed it, I couldn't say.
We took US-85 north of Lingle, and caught fractured glimpses of the disintegrating wall cloud between otherwise stunning, hilly terrain. When we finally caught up to it, the wall cloud was gone, although the base was still slowly rotating and lit from within by a deep, turquoise light.
Road options were seriously limited, so we couldn't follow this one as it tracked to the northeast. So we continued north on US-85 as other storms erupted.
North of Lusk on US-85, we were treated to an enormous, beautifully lit shelf cloud.
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.
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