The 30-hour period beginning around 3 p.m. on this day offered two extraordinary storm-chase adventures in the same corridor east-northeast of the Denver metro area and south of I-76—including the next day's Prospect Valley tornado. This was the fifth of six late-afternoon to evening supercells, and perhaps the most consistently spectacular, in a protracted train of storms rolling out of the … [Read more...]
Search Results for: "Jun 18"
Embedded Rotation
A small supercell formed in a pocket of favorably unstable air, right at the southern rim of favorable deep shear, but quickly became nearly surrounded by other storms. Regardless of becoming embedded in a bigger storm cluster, the supercell spun strongly at times in middle levels as seen from faraway radars, and tightened up enough in low levels to produce a brief funnel cloud or two, earning a … [Read more...]
Sunset on the Sojourn
Another storm-observing trip concluded with a marvelous sunset, this time across the northern Texas Panhandle as a complex of storms moved away to the southeast. I have photographed countless hundreds of sunsets, but regardless of their always unique and wondrous visual character, several of the most indelibly memorable were those ending the last chase day of the season. There's a reason for … [Read more...]
Bighorn Basin Supercell
This was a rare treat: a supercell spinning over northern Wyoming's arid yet starkly beautiful Bighorn Basin. The basin is surrounded on all side by mountains, including the lofty Bighorns to the east, with only a very narrow gap in the north connecting it to the Great Plains of southern Montana. As such, very little precipitation falls here, with storms mostly staying in the mountains or over … [Read more...]
“Bent-Back” Tornadic Mesocyclone
Seeing a newer, larger mesocyclone cross the road to our north and head east, most other observers fled this location in order to go find a way east, to keep up with the supercell. Normally that's a reasonable maneuver. However, 1) with the nearest east option being in the core, 2) having watched tornadoes form in the "bent-back" area where old, occluded mesocyclones can go to die at the rear of … [Read more...]
Dakota Mammatus: Northeast
This expansive area of mammatus, which extended overhead and far to the southwest, developed under the collective rear anvil from multiple thunderstorm clusters, after an afternoon of observing an unrelated, isolated supercell attached to the Black Hills. Although clouds to the west and northwest blocked direct sunset light from getting illuminating it, the formation was no less amazing to … [Read more...]