6/16/2015 - Eastern Wyoming Storms

Once again, I'll lift the text from Victor Gensini's blog as I'm posting this nearly a year after the event. "Tuesday featured another slight risk along the Laramie Range and we decided to hug this play due to the rather marginal ingredients elsewhere, and the slightly better upper level wind shear over the northern target (plus, we awoke in the target area!).  We ventured out of Laramie toward Glendo State Park.  We found a perch in the state park that overlooked a reservoir and captured some stunning images of a developing LP type supercell to our immediate north.  We repositioned south a few times to take in more views of the gorgeous updraft. A longer stop transpired west of Guernsey, WY, to take in the sky for a bit before ping-ponging back and forth between Chugwater and Dwyer.  This turned out to be rather fortuitous though, as we found a majestic bald eagle to photograph!

New storms were developing west of the Laramie Range, so we bolted back north toward Guernsey to a gravel road where we had previously shot some nice time lapse photos.  We allowed the core of this last (and beefy!) storm to pass just to our west before driving back toward I-25 to look for large hailstones.  The largest stones we could find were near 2.5” at the rest stop just west of Dwyer. Rather large hail for this area of the country!"

LP storm over Glendo Reservoir.

Anticyclonic funnel on back side of storm.

A bird.

Ice balls

6/15/2015 - Elk Mountain, WY Tornadoes

Lifting the text from Victor Gensini's blog, as I'm posting this blog a year after the fact, forgetting the details: "We awoke in Cheyenne to an 'interesting' risk for severe storms in the interior of WY. Moisture was pooling on the west side of the Laramie Range, along with clearing skies and a fairly strong northeasterly surface wind.  To kill time prior to convective initiation, we visited the Snowy Range Pass (~11,000 ft. elevation) where plenty of snow was still to be found. After stopping for some neat shots near Lake Marie in the Snowy Range Pass, we completed the circuit and watched developing convection near Rawlins, WY from the Elk Mountain, WY area.

The convection was ‘pretty’, but never really had a tornadic appearance. However, when driving east away from these storms on HWY 72 near Rock River, the storm suddenly pulsed up an started to feature a cone shape lowering now 15-20 miles to our west near Elk Mountain.  We stopped at a nice vista east of Rock River to watch the developing tornado.  The tornado started around 3:47 local time and was nearly continuous until 4:03 PM.  A second, smaller, rope tornado also formed around 3:53 PM just to the northeast of this first tornado.

We repositioned just south of Rock River to get a better view of this tornado and were treated with a great view (next to a fox that called a drainage pipe along the road his/her home!)

These tornadoes were rather unexpected, and after further analysis, likely formed due to a local vorticity maximum associated with strong northeasterly winds into the area.  A storm-scale boundary may have also played a role in tornadogenesis, as these storms were a ‘one and done’.  A fun and rather unexpected high-plains surprise!"

Early iteration of the storm was pretty, but certainly didn't have that tornadic look.

Tornadic storm with Elk Mountain in the distance.

Late evening setting as we headed to Laramie.

Thanks to Laura Hedien for the video of the tornadoes.

6/14/2015 - Southeast Wyoming Storms

Lifting text from Victor Gensini's blog, as I've posted this blog over a year after the event, forgetting the details on this marginal/slight risk play: "We departed west out of Omaha on Sunday with an eye on (a) cold front / pseudo surging outflow that was stalling around the I-80 corridor in western NE. These sort of features have been notorious for producing non-mesocyclonic (or landspout) type tornadoes, especially when large amounts of instability are present in the atmosphere.  While we did not find a 'needle in the haystack', we continued west toward our morning target north of Cheyenne, WY.  Convection was beginning to mature in the Wheatland, WY area, with one dominant cell pushing out ahead with a deviant southeast (and at sometimes southwest!) storm motion.  We latched on to this cell near Meriden, WY and stuck with it for the rest of the day.  The cell looked really good for about 15 min., where it featured a clear slot and attendant funnel cloud for nearly 5 min.  We eventually re-positioned south before sampling the hail core and calling it quits for the day."

Cow, clear slot, and funnel.

6/5/2015 - COD Day 8 - Vona, CO Tornadoes

We woke in Colby, KS and targeted the Palmer Divide.  As we drove toward Limon near lunch time, tornado warnings were already flying to our west south of Watkins, CO.  Forgoing lunch (for the time), we raced west to intercept the storms moving northeast off the Palmer. We finally caught a relatively strong cell south of Bennett. Though the cell wrapped up nicely, we were lacking strong inflow. Things got messy very quickly after this, so we pushed east along the interstate where we caught a quick gas station-lunch and fill-up.  Matt and I decided to blow off the Palmer stuff, hoping that new storms east along I-70 near Hugo would tap into the better environment east toward the KS border.  We did stop at Genoa for a quick lecture on hail, which spotted the ground from a prior core.  Blasting east, we set our sights on a new cell forming along the interstate to our east that would clearly ingest the best air in the region.  Despite hitting construction, we finally made it to Stratton and raced north eventually getting a glimpse of the wall cloud and a very nice cut. As we drove north and approached a ridge, it began to tornado. We pulled immediately and let the group take in the setting.  It was a beautiful scene, with a tornado that grew to a quick wedge, complete with a collar cloud.  A new meso formed to the east of the tornado and, as we drove north, provided an excellent example of meso hand-off. We stopped a couple more times, witnessing two more quick tornadoes in a rapidly rotating wall cloud sheath affiliated with the newer meso.  We eventually called it as storm interaction and (muddy) road network made for difficult chasing.  We grabbed steaks at Montana Mikes before a late night talking about our experience in the Sleep Inn lobby. A good day!

Initial supercell south of Bennett.

Tornado north of Vona, CO ... lasted about 15 minutes.

My shots were wide angle; Laura was able to zoom in a bit.

Wedges out briefly.

Second tornado ...

What a great group of folks!

Lapses ...

6/4/2015 - COD Day 7 - Atwood and Selden, KS Supercells

We had planned to target the area near Limon, but were very concerned about the lack of flow progged by the models across the Front Range. Despite having reservations in Limon, we cancelled, and targeted the north-central KS region with high hopes that the big CAPE and relatively good shear could make for a great day.  We met up with Victor in Phillipsburg, KS to do another balloon launch.  The sounding revealed our problem---a pretty stout cap in an environment with modest convergence.  While we had attempts at CI, nothing could sustain. We eventually moved west to intercept storms developing in northwest Kansas in a relatively good environment.  We latched onto a supercell near Atwood, KS. It, initially, had wonderful structure, but soon transitioned to an outflowish piece of crap. We pushed south, thinking we were done. Alas, a new storm northwest of Selden caught our attention. We got to watch the storm do a textbooks split as we drove south across the outer reaches of the FFD. Eventually we got south of the precip, pulling off to take in an amazing supercell in the twilight north of Selden. The storm wrapped like a flying saucer, spitting out lightning like few had witnessed. We shifted south only once or twice, as the slow moving storm put on a sky fire show.  A close lightning strike finally pushed the group back in the vans. With a hotel in Colby, we moved west in hopes of a nice lightning show on the backside of the convection. The storm did not disappoint. We enjoyed about an hour of late evening fireworks before finally calling it and heading to the hotel and Montana Mikes for dinner.

Launching weather balloon near Phillipsburg, KS

Resulting sounding.

Initial supercell near Atwood, KS

Driving south to intercept splitting supercell between Oberlin and Selden, KS.

Steve's great shot of group taking it all in ...

Leon grabbed this amazing shot!

After twilight, we shifted south and watched the amazing "sky fire" light show!

Three stills stacked.

Five stills stacked.

Four stills stacked.

Lapses from stills, gopro, and dashcam ...