Last Chance near Last Chance
Wiggins to Cope CO
23 Jun 13
SHORT: Remained ahead of northeast CO convection as it metamorphosed from early, fuzzy slop near Hoyt and Wiggins to a supercell-infused squall line between Woodrow and Cope with several photogenic and beautiful scenes.
LONG:
Final chase days of the season usually are known in advance to us, because we tend to take our Great Plains trips near the end of the traditional spring storm-observing season in a fixed time slot. As such, many last-chance chase days are known as such that morning, if not before. They can get sentimental. We focus and reflect on the possibilities with a renewed sense of wonder and anticipation, knowing this is the final opportunity for the season and probably the year (save the opportunistic fall chase that happens once every five years or so).
Northeastern Colorado was the target area, with the old outflow boundary from the previous day’s convection in WY and NEb having settled southward into eastern CO and weakened, leaving behind some upslope flow into the Front Range, reduced low-level moisture compared to the previous day in WY, and weaker (but still sufficient) shear for supercells. Cloud bases were likely to be high, with strong potential for outflow dominance and meager, conditional tornado risk.
Yet these reduced-moisture, upslope-flow days often yield scenic skyscapes festooned with interesting storm clouds of various types–especially if one is patient with often ragged, nebulous early convection and keeps apace until it organizes. Forecast storm motion toward the CO/KS border area also likely would take us toward I-70 and a one-day drive home the following day.
Our weather-dictated itinerary the previous several days had taken us from MT-ND-SD-WY-NEb, where we were starting the morning in Kimball, right by the CO border. It was as if a storm-intercept guide had been navigating us gradually homeward with amazing skies and fantastic experiences all along the journey. How fortunate! And here we were, ready to partake of one more afternoon of beautiful storms on the way home.
Proximity to the target area allowed plenty of time to eat brunch, analyze data, and watch the southwestern horizons. Early-afternoon towers erupting to our SW, in northern CO, were easy to see from IBM, so we cruised easily S to Ft. Morgan and saw the high, fuzzy bases even from there. Continuing SW through Wiggins toward Hoyt, we got a nice close-up view of the virga factories, appreciating the majesty of the High Plains even under soft storms, on scales large and small. Small? Oh yes. We enjoyed watching birds that Elke couldn’t identify hop through the stubbled cornfields of 2012, skittering along at a deliberate clip, pecking away at bugs, seeds, or other material unseen.
Next, we retraced the path back up to Ft. Morgan, then veered southward to get on proper road options that would allow us to stay ahead of whatever would evolve from the growing multicell complex to our W. While doing so, the convection slowly acquired visible, if still high, updraft bases, which gradually grew in areal extent and number along with CG flashes. I’ve seen this before. Usually, in these favorable deep-shear profiles, a supercell will develop unless the entire mass is blasted asunder in infancy by cold outflow. That wasn’t happening; the cores offered only feeble density currents, judging by the lack of proximal dust plumes.
Jaunting off the main highway between Brush and Woodrow, a couple miles down a dead-end dirt road, we found a good place right at the terminus where we could photograph wild sunflowers and a wild storm. Cores grew. Updrafts grew in front of the cores. Inflow strengthened. The whole raggedly beautiful storm pile got better-organized and backbuilt before our very eyes, ears and nostrils, as revealed during a stop just S of Woodrow.
East on US-36 4 miles out of Last Chance, and another mile N on a (barely) paved side road, led us to temporary solitude: us, a photogenic abandoned farmstead and the rampart of storms in the west. Whoa! What’s that back there to the NW behind the old house? You guessed it, brother–not just an old storage building, but a high-based wall cloud and mesocyclone.
Although short-lived, the line-embedded supercell provided some striking, picturesque scenery as it headed ENE, before getting disorganized in favor of other updrafts to our own W and SW. While watching that spectacle, a ranch mom and her kids drove up on an ATV to make sure we were OK; we chatted with them awhile before one of the little ones drove them all back to their house on the four-wheeler. Encroaching storms sent us eastward to the Anton area.
Even though the whole complex was becoming increasingly outflow-dominant in the fading daylight, a marvelous episode of deep twilight blues, slate to marine in hue, sandwiched layers of laminar cloud material to the SW…to the N…to the SW again. What a show! At least transiently intense, somewhat supercellular updrafts kept forming along its leading edge, with assorted notches (some rather sparkly!) and other circulations of varying scales.
Admiring the scene, we also noticed that the base surfing outflow to our SW was becoming increasingly circular, quickly. Within less than 30 seconds, and about a mile away (closer than it appears in this wide-angle shot), a small but tightly rotating wall cloud formed from a pre-existing, seemingly benign lowering under that base (annotated version). Quickly, dust stopped then rose beneath. The circulation started to hook toward its NE–right at us. What had been light westerly (but mild) outflow winds backed and accelerated from the ESE. Time to bail out of there!
Although I doubted any substantial tornado could develop in this circumstance, I didn’t want to be the guinea pig to test that hypothesis. Even though we only had to go less than 1/4 mile to get back on US-36 and gun it eastward, we still were not comfortably relaxed–no thoughts of rocking in hammocks beneath Caribbean tiki huts while sipping dewy beverages. Instead, the rising pile of dust, under a small area of cloud-base rotation, with screaming inflow winds, nearly overtook us. I can’t say for certain if that circulation ever tightened into a full-fledged tornado, but if not, it came precariously close.
Just as fast as it formed, deeper outflow from the west crashed through the feature and tore it up, leaving behind a dispersive dust pall over the highway behind us as we gained a few miles of headway. With daylight fading fast and eyelids growing heavier, we watched the mess become more linear and turned S toward I-70, out of the way of all storms. A night at our favorite motel in ITR, lightning flickering off to the N and NE, closed out our 2014 storm-intercept season with a lullaby after the atmosphere’s final flourish.
Driving home the next day, we reflected and remembered. What a season it was…rewarding for us photographically, educationally and spiritually through the unfailingly transcendent experience of wonder and awe before storm-tossed Great Plains skies. The sting of major missed tornado events practically in our backyard was healed during over half an hour of observing from one spot a nearly stationary, violent, yet ultimately harmless tornado in open country of northern Kansas. We made some great memories amidst the solitude of the prairies from North Texas to central Montana. With heavy hearts, we also thought of old friends killed just over three weeks prior by the vaporous forms we seek, on a day when we didn’t head out. Here’s to a safer and much less destructive, yet more photogenic and inspiring, 2014 storm season to come.
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Our PING trail for this day. [PING date is ending date in UTC.]
Pawnee Grassland Supercell and Sterling Sunset
Filed under: Summary
Cheyenne WY to Sterling CO
15 Jun 13
SHORT: Chronically photogenic storm from CYS to Sterling.
LONG:
We began the day in Ft. Morgan with increasing (but still marginal) low-level moisture feeding two forecast plays:
- The dependable Cheyenne Ridge/Laramie Range region, which seldom fails to pop a storm under upslope flow and substantial surface heating, and
- Palmer Ridge/Front Range area farther S, similarly dependable but under weaker flow aloft.
My privately posted chase forecast discussion read, in part…
“This pattern strongly resembles several that have fired grand supercells off the LAR mtns NW CYS — some with spectacular tubes — though moisture today is a little less than I’d like to see it for tornadic action. Postfrontal winds should turn around after 18Z and go upslope into that area. If a storm can fire over there, it could proceed ESE through the extreme SE part of WY and eventually in an oblique path across the NE CO border…”
That was the scenario we selected; and fortunately, that’s exactly how it worked out. Such success doesn’t happen as often as I’d like, so we should celebrate when it does. On this day, we celebrated with some splendid stormscapes and one of the best Great Plains photography days of the year.
First, however, we ate a great buffet lunch at a highly-reviewed place in eastern Ft. Morgan, away from all the main highways: the Country Steakout. Try them next time you’re in the area, especially if you want to get really full, before a chase. We then trekked through the Pawnee National Grassland on the way to the CYS initiation target. [We would return through this amazing area later in step with the supercell.] Along the way, we found an abandoned farmhouse that showed us decent photo opportunities even at midday (samples: outer wall texture, another outer wall scene, light and shadow through a window and on the floor, more exterior boards).
After that, a lone Cb arose off the WNW horizon, which satellite imagery confirmed was firing off the southern part of the Laramie Range, just as hoped and predicted. We headed through CYS, passing Mike U and a few other chasers along WY-211 (Horse Creek Rd) to find an excellent vantage for the approaching storm, which offered a large and textured but ragged and elongated updraft base.
Peeling itself off the highest terrain and heading ESE, the storm kept that elongated-updraft look after crossing the Colorado border near Hereford. Although this storm flirted with excessive downdraft production and outflow-dominance on several occasions, it was able to maintain just enough proximal inflow to keep from gusting out–remaining photogenic all the while. A view to the E, from the same spot as the last shot, showed multiple, parallel, cumuliform inflow bands feeding into the high base. What an interesting and beautiful process to behold!
Road voids over the buttes and mesas (here spotlit with sunlight against a dark storm background) kept us somewhat distant from the storm at times, and/or relegated to its SW side, but that was obviously not a problem from a photographic standpoint. In fact, we stayed on the western fringes of both the storm’s rear-flank core area and the Cedar Creek wind farm to take advantages of (and marvel at) scenes like this and like this.
Back roads delivered us healthy and well to CO-71, whereupon we headed S to CO-14, stopping along the way to view the gorgeous towers to our NE over the shortgrass prairie. Eastward we moved on 14 to get back near the SE-moving, high-based supercell, which seemed to be accelerating. Daylight fading, we decided to stay in good light and on the storm’s back side as it approached Sterling, and let the rear-flank gust front and its wondrous collection of tinted cloud material pass over the green wheat fields.
Sunset time was a dazzling experience, with elevated storms that were growing to the W helping to cast differential light, shadow and hue across the convective sky to our immediate SE. I had to slap on a multi-stop graduated neutral density filter to offset some of the dynamic range (old-fashioned, I know…but it worked out well). At times, the colors were out of this world…seldom have we witnessed such a variety of light and texture in such a small part of a convective sky! The experience was amazing–parked on a remote, dirt back road with nothing but us, the sky, the cool breeze, and some singing meadowlarks for company. This is why we travel to the High Plains every year.
The convection to the W grew larger and started putting on a fairly furious electrical show after dark, but we had to forgo lightning photography to get Elke some suddenly-needed medicine in Sterling. That wasn’t available, so we headed promptly down I-76 to to the outskirts of DEN for the night, enjoying the flickering light show in our side windows and rear-view mirror while hoping she would be healthy enough to chase the following few days (great news…she was, and we had a fantastic chase in the Nebraska Sandhills the next day!).
Well in the Wells
Cheyenne Wells to Akron, CO
14 Jun 13
SHORT: High-based, outflow-dominant storms.
LONG:
Starting our annual Great Plains vacation the day before, we drove from OUN-ITR–a long haul. Morning this day found us in our favorite Burlington motel, the Chaparral Inn, realizing fully well that moisture was scant with the strongest deep shear located N of a slow-moving to stationary front over NE CO and NW KS. In short, it looked like a day when early towers might yield spouts, then it would be an outflow fest afterward. Hey, when dealing with the atmosphere, you can’t take more than you’re given.
First, however, there was some unfinished business to attend at the increasingly derelict “See Six States” tower, antique shop and very outdated tourist attraction near Genoa. The place, despite its schtick, is packed with history! Elke had spied a particular old bottle there last year that she regretted not buying; and sure enough it still was there, sitting on the same spot of the same shelf. The eccentric old man that ran the place, Jerry Chubbuck, was more than happy to sell it to her; he saw maybe one or three vehicles a day stop in, while thousands passed by on the nearby Interstate. [Sadly, Jerry died in August. What will become of that old place and its thousands of antique items?] I also had a little compositional photography in mind there (with permission) of some old bottles and the inside of the tower area upstairs. As we left, in early afternoon, convective towers began to build along the front to our ENE-SE-SSW.
Gradually and in stepwise fashion, we headed back E on I-70 then S out of ITR toward Cheyenne Wells, driving beneath the now high-based line of showers and storms. We never saw any spouts (updrafts were fuzzy, not firm, thanks to meager CAPE), but we did see a weak gustnado to the SE. In Cheyenne Wells, we had a great late lunch/early dinner at a small storefront cafe staffed and patronized by very hospitable people. My red-blooded, patriotic t-shirts, and the sociopolitical slant behind them, go over well in the Wells and in other small towns all over the Great Plains.
Several miles W of town, we stopped to observe and photograph an interestingly chaotic sky, before proceeding N toward lodging that would put us in position for the next day’s target area near the CO/NEb border. Also, on our way through the rain (coming into Cheyenne Wells), in town, after we headed E out of town, and in a second round of (heavier) storms near Anton, we PINGed the rain too. The green dots show our PING trails; we were the only PINGers in eastern CO for those storms. Finally, near AKO, we stopped to photograph the late-afternoon light with a background of dark clouds from the small Anton MCS.
It was a stress-free way to get into the swing of the trip. We had low expectations meteorologically, so this was a casually pleasant day of storm and landscape observing, food consumption, and visiting the old man’s fading attraction near Genoa, and for what may have been the final of several visits over the years to the See Six States tower.