Day 10: Eve Delivers!

If there is one thing I learned from this trip.....its that I need a new camera. The pictures I took do this no justice.

We got pretty lucky, we were again split on what to do and agreed to go north out of Fort Collins to Cheyenne, WY and reassess. As we were waiting in the McD's I noticed Dr. P. intensely examining the radar, but I refused to get my hopes about seeing anything today and continued doing what I was doing. We got on the road and headed north up I-25 and about 30 mins north, the radar indicated that the storm we were driving to had a hook on the radar. I still refused to get excited about the storm and continued playing my game.

The excitement was starting to build in the van and we were all trying to stay distracted incase we didn't see anything.  Then...out of nowhere, Dr. P. yells "LOOK, THERE IT IS! LOOK LOOK!"  And 10 miles ahead near Wheatland, WY, sure enough there was a large tornado straight ahead, I think they heard the screams from our van back in Denver. We pulled over and got out and started snapping pictures of Tornado #1.

After some pictures we decided to move a little closer and we all hopped in the van and headed a few miles closer to the storm.  We took some more pictures and one of our group who is doing their thesis on Tornados got some atmospheric readings.  There were people pulled over on the side of the road and for some reason there were still people driving into the tornado that was heading straight for the interstate...you have to wonder what some of these people are thinking.

As we started to get back in the van, the tornado became rain wrapped. We turned around and moved back south to a safer position and spotted a 2nd tornado. I didn't get to see it due to my position in the van and we couldn't get out because we needed to haul ass to get to an even safer position. However people had jammed themselves under the overpass where we were and we had to get them out of the way.  IF A TORNADO IS COMING YOUR WAY, THE OVERPASS IS THE WORST PLACE FOR YOU TO BE! It provides no protection and actually amplifies the winds (acts as a wind tunnel.) If you are in a car and a tornado is bearing down on you, drive as fast as possible away from it. If you can't drive away from it, get out and lie down in a ditch.  We informed people of this fact and some of them moved (read: asked us where we were moving to and then hauled ass behind us out of there).  Of course we had to tell them we were meteorologists for them to actually listen.

We moved to another position a little further north and then went East to get to a better vantage point.  It was at this point we watched Tornado #3 start to form, touch down and then dissipate at the wall cloud it was attached to went away. This bad boy ended up being a Large wedge tornado which was pretty cool. It was one of the coolest things I have seen in my whole life and the tornado high we were on lasted until the hotel at midnight.

Heading back to the interstate, we saw hail lying on the ground like it had just snowed. We got out and looked at some stones and there were a few 2 inch hail stones.  These things are huge. Sure, you think 2 inches isn't that big, but when you see them in your hand....these are impressive little buggers when you think about the speed of the updraft that is required to keep a stone of this size suspended in the cloud long enough to get that big.

We were pretty lucky today. The storm was crossing the road we happened to be on and the tornados all occurred in a pretty remote area so there were not any injuries that we know of and only a few structures were damaged.

OMG THIS WAS SO AMAZING!

PS: Video will be coming as soon as I get to better wireless. I have a video of the 3rd tornado forming.  Plus other people I am traveling with have vids too.

EDIT 6/10/12: Pics from Chris Iragi and Danielle Laflamme

Tornado 1 photo by Chris Iragi

photo by Chris Iragi

 Tornado 3 photo by Chris Iragi

 Tornado 1 photo by Danielle Laflamme

 Tornado 1 photo by Danielle Laflamme

Tornado 1 photo by Danielle Laflamme

 Radar of the storm. See the hook! photo by Danielle Laflamme

Pics by me:

Day 9: Go Diego! Go!

    Today seemed marginal to us. Everything we looked at said there wouldn't be storms in the area today but the NWS seemed to think there would be an outbreak of storms in the afternoon. Since we didn't have anything to do, we decided to hang around for a bit and see what developed.  We were lucky that the projected area was right over the hotel.

     Dr. P took us to his old stomping grounds in old town Fort Collins. This place was pretty cool. We ate at HuHot which is a Mongolian Grill where you build your own dish with veggies, meat and seasoning and then they cook it right in front of you. I will honestly say this is first asian food that I have enjoyed eating.  After lunch we did a little bit of souvenir shopping.  Looking up to the sky we saw some clouds building and decided to head about an hour east of Fort Collins and set up for a chase.

      We happened to set up in a position we would always end up returning to when ever we tried to move. That was definitely a sign. We named this storm "Diego." There was a lot of hail associated with this storm. We drove through a hail shaft at least twice.  One time we stopped to inspect the hail...after it was done falling from the sky of course.  We measured a bunch of stones at 1 inch, but the biggest one we found was an 1.25 inches.  These were definitely the biggest hail stones I have ever seen.

    Eventually, storms started to converge on us and we had to hightail it out of dodge and head back to Fort Collins. As we were heading back, we saw that someone had reported a tornado 8 miles from our position and at first I was disappointed that we had somehow missed it. Once, I got over my disappointment I realized that, unless it was rain wrapped, there was no way there was a tornado there without us being able to see it. We were in perfect position to see that tornado and there was nothing. I think someone had a gust of wind that knocked down a tree and they called it in.

    Fort Collins is an amazing place.  I wouldn't mind vacationing or living here some day.  Not sure where we are headed next....we will go where the weather takes us.

Day 8: Sometimes life just wants you to look at an elk's rear.....

We hit the road this morning from Colby, KS at about 11:00am after we had briefing and confirmed our worst fears....the ridge of death persists. So we decided it would be a good day for Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. It was a quick 5 hour drive compared to the standards of this trip. For some reason I was in a quiet and reflective mood today as I thought about things in my past and things I hope to have in my future. I can't totally say it was a totally positive experience, but it was a good thing to do none the less.

Rocky Mountain National Park was absolutely amazing. The views were great.

Grand Canyon and The Painted Desert are still my favorite National Parks but RMNP is a close second. On our way up to the summit we took atmospheric readings at 4 different spots to see how the the temperature, pressure, wind speed, wind direction,  headwinds, crosswinds, dew point and humidity all changed. I was a cool little experiment. Our trip up the mountain also surprised us with some wild life. We saw an Elk grazing near the road and then a little further up the road the rest of his herd was there.

We made it to the top but the gift shop was closed. Much to the dismay of some in the group.

As we headed back down the mountain, mother nature presented a graupel and rain shower mixed with some lightning and thunder.  More elk were seen, which I guess is a rare occurrence.  They must have known I was coming and decided to show themselves.

The sky gods were shining down upon us when we stopped to take a picture of a rainbow and we were treated to a cloud to cloud lightning strike behind the rainbow we were looking at. It might be the single most amazing sight in my life.

After a drive of about an hour, under an amazing Colorado sunset, we made it to our hotel and then had dinner at the olive garden. I always eat too much when I go there.

Tomorrow we might chase...it depends on if the models agree with the current NWS outlook of a slight risk of severe weather in NE Colorado.