8/16/10 Deer Trail and Brush Colorado Tornadoes!

Holy Cow! What a year for tornadoes in Colorado.I Chased with Mark Farnik and Ben Toms today and we scored four tornadoes! Two near Deer Trail and two more 70 miles North, on the South side of Brush. We had a really nice boundary to play with and storms had a chance to produce only a few tornadoes before moving off the NE to SW oriented boundary. Very photogenic tornadoes!

Tornado near Gary Colorado, somewhere South of Brush

Possible tornado near Deer Trail

Debris from a tornado near Gary

Funnel aloft near Gary

June 10th Deer Trail Colorado Tornadoes

What an amazing day! Colorado has had a fantastic year for tornadoes. This more than made up for missing the Campo Tornadoes. After a series of cell mergers and interactions, this storm anchored on the southern end of the chain of supercells and spun like a top, dropping 3ish tornadoes.

I have seen tons of supercells but nothing compares to this symmetry! Tornado #1 ongoing.

Looks like we had a weak satellite circulation associated with Tornado #2

Tornado #2 looking epic.

June 21st Weak Tornado Near Yuma Colorado

Sorry for the lack of updates. Many more will be posted in the coming days. Had a solo chase on June 21st. I left late and core punched, emerging under the rain free base East of Brush. This brief tornado never fully condensed but I was able to confirm rotation at the cloudbase and on the ground. Yuma got smashed with baseball sized hail shortly after this. I called it a day and went back west to witness an awesome rainbow and sunlit towers.

5/22 South Dakota Tornadoes Report!

Quite simply, this was the best chase of my life! Jon Merage and I were surprised to hear that V2 called a down day so we headed up North, towards Pierre South Dakota. A small patch of CU formed NE of Pierre and developed into a violent supercell. We watched the thing from birth till death. Fortunately, no injuries or deaths were reported but some unfortunate damage was done to farms north of Bowdle.

This storm had incredible structure! This is looking South from the North end of the Hook. Wrapping up so nicely, we just knew this was going to put down tornadoes.


An early tornado South of Highway 12, about 5 miles West of Bowdle. Not sure if this continued and developed into the wedge or not. It almost appeared to be the same circulation. We will have to go over the radar data.


After the tornado crossed Highway 12, we blasted East and turned North on Highway 47. I somehow managed to "click" this shot handheld from the driver's seat enroute to the wedge intercept. The storm really began to look plain nasty at this point.


So, we headed North on 47 and see this earth devouring beast of a tornado. This is at 10mm so it looks much further away.


And here is is at 20mm. Ears popping at this point as they did several times during the chase. The data from our mesonet should be very interesting.


Ok, this is the wedge grinding through a farm North of Bowdle on 47. Very scary moment here as a policeman appeared to drive directly into the circulation towards the damaged farmstead to check for survivors. Fortunately, he appeared a few moments later. No injuries were reported here despite the damage to the farmstead wich looks to be at least EF-3 in strength.


I will have a link up soon to the amazing footage that Jon Merage got. Be sure to stay tuned to that.

May 22nd South Dakota Violent Tornadoes!

Massive Tornadoes in South Dakota today! Just a quickie here. Plenty more to come, trust me.

2010 Lightning Drought Comes to an End!

Today marked my first chase in New Mexico. We had a late start due to car complications and were unable to deploy with the rest of the V2 crew. We headed West as soon as the car was ready to go but V2 called off operations for the day before we could get to the storm. So we settled for some sunset lightning before heading to the hotel. Decent Lightning Finally!






We will deploy on tornadic storms tomorrow!