Storm Chase Day 10: Eastern Colorado

Wow, I don’t really even know what to say about today. It was awesome and powerful and beautiful and crazy all at the same time. We began the day in Colby, Kansas and were looking at a tough forecast for this afternoon.
We were playing a target in north central Colorado, along the potential nosing of low level moisture. We didn’t know if that would be there, though. A cold front had wiped the area of significant moisture, but the models were showing it returning with southeasterly flow by the afternoon and evening. Based on the model runs, we targeted Watkins, Colorado. After a wonderful sandwich at Jimmy John’s, we got onto our eventual storm. The atmosphere set up like we expected. Wind shear in the atmosphere was very good, as winds were southwesterly in the mid levels and southeasterly in the lower levels.

This created favorable wind profiles across the region, and allowed for the storms to develop and move into a good environment. Our storm initiated just after lunch time, and struggled for quite sometime. It wasn’t in the best shear and instability, and thus it struggled. However, over a one hour timespan this afternoon, the wind shear began to improve significantly, and allowed for the storm that we were on to develop a deeper and stronger rotation. And did it ever.

This storm matured into one of the most beautiful High Precipitation Supercells that I have ever seen, in picture or real life. It moved into an environment that only improved shear wise, and allowed the storm to flourish. It was incredibly photogenic, and we followed it from the eastern Suburbs of Denver all the way back to our hotel in Dodge City, Kansas. That is pretty cool if you ask me!