Adam Adkins
EF3
Patrick Martin, that storm is incredible! Was that taken last year in Elbert county? The Elbert, Arapahoe, Lincoln county areas in Colorado seem to be a prime location for storms like this.
Colorado Storm Chasing Image Thread
- Thread starter Adam Adkins
- Start date
Adam Adkins
EF3
I just wanted to point out another thing... and that is that there is rarely any major season to season variability over Eastern CO. While I watch all the chasers freak out in May wondering if they will get any storms, I am here not worried at all. June is coming! Check out these maps. These are all storm reports in Colorado per year from 2012 through 2000. This shows the consistency. 2012 was our worst year, but we still had great storms!
joel ewing
EF5
Adam, I think by now we're all going to pitch in a few bucks apiece and have a custom-made cheerleader's uniform for you with a great big "C" on the front. Dude...what you need to do is get out in the field more. See for yourself how the chasing is out there. I do disagree with your statement that there isn't much variability from year to year in Colorado's tornado production. You've only gone back 12 yrs. I'd suggest you get into Storm Data and look at the stats from the 70's or 80's to the present. Then you'll see that indeed, just like any other state, Colorado has it's strong years and it's weak years. I think what primarily drives the lean years is having a really dry year with respect to moisture, as well as abnormally cool temps thru the season. Eastern Colorado is certainly prone to have that happen. The other thing about your 2000 to 2012 tornado maps is that most of the tornadoes listed there were basically little dust-whirls and dust-devils that were erroneously reported as actual tornadoes. No, not really. I just wanted to make you get light-headed for a moment. Hey man...put your money where your mouth is....get a chase partner or two to help out on fuel costs...and see how YOU score this season! Hopefully you'll be the first to photograph that Colorado EF-5 that you have been trying to conjure. Good luck.
Patrick Martin
EF4
Yeah, last year 6-7-12. It was southern Elbert county and into northern El Paso.
I have to agree in large part with Joel though. We get a lot of landspout/non-supercell tornadoes in CO, so although data plots show a lot in terms of shear numbers, if you found a way to break down supercell vs non-supercell, I think you may likely find the same year to year inconsistencies as with other areas. Don't get me wrong, love to chase CO, but gotta go where the best setup is. Last year for example, we covered 4300 miles of driving in 9 days on our chasecation, and something like 3800 the year before, all in my personal vehicle. I've said before, and still agree that CO has some great chasing, but same can be said elsewhere. A couple of my favorite chases the last couple years have been in NM last year and MT the year before...of which neither storms produced tornadoes, but the challenge of the forecast, the company (ie my chase partner) and the shear fun/wow factor of what ensued those days/evenings made it.
joel ewing
EF5
Now HERE'S something about Adam's 13 tornado-frequency maps that I find VERY interesting, that I never knew before. I'll bet nobody else in the chase world did either. Look at the stats for extreme western Colorado where it borders Utah. In Mesa County, which is the Grand Junction / Fruita area, there have been quite a few tornado reports. Actually, there are more tornado reports in extreme western Colorado than I ever thought possible...from the far northwest county of Moffat all the way down to the northern New Mexico border! Of the 13 maps that Adam listed, Mesa county has had multiple tornadoes in 5 of those 13 years!! Man, I had no idea. I would think those areas would be very very dry. Perhaps the shear is sometimes strong enough to overcome meager moisture. Now....are these tornadoes that form, are they from mesocyclones....or are they landspouts? Also note that in this same stretch of western Colorado there are quite a few marks where there have been high winds. Were all these these winds the straight-line non-tornadic variety....or were some of them tornadic? Except for a few places in western Colorado, I would say this area is very sparsely populated....especially right up next to where Colorado borders Utah. How many more tornadoes have happened there that have never been seen...much less reported?? Look at Dolores county...only 1900 people there. Most of the western counties have the bulk of their population bases in the far eastern portion of these counties...closer to the mountains. My guess....and this absolutely fascinates me....is that there is far more tornadic activity going on here than most people realize. Perhaps the local ranchers out there could shed some light on this, if you had the chance to discuss this with them. But even those folks, just like farmers and ranchers in the primary tornado alley....when it's rough thunderstorm weather they go inside and / or underground....and often don't see the actual tornadoes happen. I think it would be easy to verify in Storm Data, but my guess is that this activity is associated with moisture moving northward during the "monsoon" season in Arizona and New Mexico...which means July, August and September. You know.....discoveries like this, which has really piqued my interest now, really gets my blood going. Wouldn't it be cool if there were some off-season chasing opportunities for adventerous chasers who wanted to blaze the trail and see what was really going on out in that area? I'll bet there would be some drop-dead gorgeous photographic opportunities out there too. I've never been there....can anybody shed some light on this? Ever since I began pondering this late last night, it has given me the grins. Now watch, what it'll turn out to be is that some old drunk ranch hand in Mesa County has been phoning in false tornado reports year after year....lol.
jeremy wilson
I used to work and drive in this area a lot and find this really interesting. I've seen multiple storms over this area in the monsoon season, but I've never seen anything resembling a supercell. They are usually high based lightning producers that sometimes fill up dry gulches with roaring waters. The drunk ranch hand reporting strong dust-devils seems more likely. Now there are large flat, open areas that are( i would guess) extremely elevated. It probably wouldn't take much to get a landspoutish type spin-up under a strong monsoon storm....
Hannah.Taylor
EF4
Well I just moved to Denver (enroute this week as
we speak) and hearing you say this makes me happy.
I just moved to Lakewood, CO so if you need a chase partner to keep expenses down this summer send me a pm. I'm pulling in to Denver Thursday evening and unloading my car. The next trough that brings a good potential for severe wx and I will be chomping at the bit to go.
Ive had to sit on the sidelines and watch in gut wrenching fashion for the past two years because of college and limited finances, but now it's my time to go play.
Joe Zemek
EF2
Adam, eastern CO is certainly great chase country, regardless of how it ranks in the number of major events/strong tornadoes. As someone who understands financial limits on one's chase range, we have to also accept the natural limits on the frequency of the upper tier supercells that produce multiple/long track tornadoes. Sometimes the slope prevents an ideal setup by drying out the SFC; other times, the upslope greatly enhances moisture convergence. Just chase where & when you can, & be happy with what you see. It's not like there's a brick wall at the CO border, either; for not too much more gas, there's plenty of potential in SE WY/NE Panhandle/W KS as long as the moisture makes it here. So we have to wait until June for that; that's just fine.
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