• 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.

Thundersnow, Grauple, and Hail in Denver

Joined
Mar 2, 2004
Messages
2,401
Location
Northern Colorado
A very interesting event in Denver this evening as a "storm" blew up over Lakewood and intensified into a 50DBz storm near Parker leaving behind thundersnow, grauple, and even some very small hail.

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I have more pictures on my blog as I even attempted to shoot lightning frmo this storm. No such luck as it was all inner-cloud, but I saw a total of 9 flashes in less than 30 minutes. The storm went on to produce more out east as well.

Blog Entry from Feb 1

This is the second thundersnow event in the last three days here in Denver. Wednesday's snowstorm dumped nearly half a foot of snow in places in two hours.
 
As I left for work this morning, I thought to myself ... "No, I probably won't need my camera today." Famous last words.

I was on the southeast corner of the Denver metro area today. I had gone to a friened's house for pizza, beer, and Guitar Hero. I was rather immersed in the game when my girlfriend texted me asking what was up the snow. Snow? A band of snow had formed earlier to the south ... but it looked like it was dissipating and I thought we were in for a clear night. Boy, was I wrong. Another friend called from the Ken Caryl area and said he heard thunder. From that point on, it was a frenzy of calls and texts as everyone seemed to be getting something crazy ... lightning, rain, graupel. It was just cloudy outside for me ... but I looked at the radar and saw something brewing... and heading directly at me. Soon, KAPA was reporting "thunderstorm" and "light snow" It wasn't long before I heard thunder. As the 'cell' developed and propagated east toward me, I got excited. My friend and I waited outside as the occasional thunder became more frequent. Every couple of minutes we'd see a flash and a light snow had begun.

Soon, the lightning was occurring a couple times per minute. Most were in-cloud and the snow became heavy.

Then ... a very strange noise could be heard over the rustle of the snow. Impacts. The one inch of fresh snow that had quickly fallen was now being pock-marked with hail/graupel craters. Most were pea-sized, some larger. This event lasted ten to fifteen minutes, all while heavy snow was falling and the sky was flashing every 10-20 seconds.

I'm still left wondering whether to call it hail or graupel.

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5:08Z ... hard to see in this little image, but we were under the 'core' at that moment.

I took all below photos with my phone ... thus the crappy resolution. They came out alright ... but it would have been nice to have my camera.

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my night wasnt as exciting in colorado springs as it was in denver. i was able to see the lightning while viewing the southern edge of the "storm"

these shots are the system around 1700 to 1730.
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between lightning flashes...(had to adjust the photo to bring out the cloud)

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I was working at my desk at home in the Columbine area of Littleton, heard an obvious rumble of thunder and thought, "wait a minute... what?" I checked radar and saw the snow squall rapidly approaching my location from the north. Looked outside, and it was already snowing. It wasn't particularly heavy snow, but the flakes were big. I didn't see any graupel or hail, however.

The thunder continued intermittently for about 10 minutes or so, and I did catch one flash of lightning, but the "storm" scooted off to the east fairly quickly thereafter. Watching a radar loop, it looked as if the "core" in Dann's radar image developed directly over my head before moving east. That's been my typical experience with Summer monsoon storms since moving to this side of town... funny to see the same thing happen this time of year, though.
 
Nice pictures, Jason!

Jeff, sounds like you missed out on the fun. If I would have been at my house, I would have suffered the same fate. Although I did find some really small graupel in my tube at home.

Upon further investigation, I'll have to say that it wasn't hail but just very large graupel that fell. Hail would infer that the 'stone' had passed through an area of the atmosphere where liquid water was present. The graupel formed by passing through layers of supercooled water droplets (riming). Still awesome, though!

Dann.
 
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