Second Dose of Beautiful Outflow Dominance
Filed under: Summary
Limon to Sheridan Lake and Lamar CO
17 June 11
SHORT: Intercepted two supercells that quickly became outflow-dominant in east-central CO. Picturesque structure. Nighttime lighting, mammatus and moonrise show near Lamar CO.
LONG: Starting at the laundromat in Yuma, we headed S at midday toward a forecast initiation area near the Palmer Divide, which by the time we hot the open plains S of town, already bubbled with tall convective towers. As in the previous day, I was concerned that storms would go too soon and create a big outflow surge; but instead they percolated for some time, struggling to organize as we approached LIC. There, we sat under the NE edge of a high-based, fuzzy, virga-spraying line of cells, none particularly impressive for about an hour.
Finally, as so often happens on these highest of the High Plains, a few distinct updraft bases materialized from the mush, one of more of which I guessed would evolve into a supercell, given both the favorable deep-layer shear and increasing low-level moisture content with time. When some of the virga started to reach ground as rain in LIC, we zipped several miles S of town then W a mile on a dead-end dirt road to watch the action unfold, while remaining in at least marginal phone-data coverage of LIC’s cellular towers. Turns out we didn’t need the data…as often is true out there, the eyes have it.
Two supercells developed essentially in sync — one to our somewhat distant W beyond Simla, the other to our NW between Matheson and LIC.
The closer storm evolved fast, and in fascinating ways. The initially broad, high updraft base in the last photo lowered somewhat, with a broad, ragged cigar of scud materializing beneath as the updraft began to process rain-cooled air from the neighboring parts of the forward-flank core. Notice, in the last photo, the lower-middle part of the scud bank seems to be rising off the ground. In fact, it not only was rising, but weakly rotating–before the broader scud stogie ever attached to the parent storm’s cloud base: a “scudnado” indeed! The scud mass kept growing and rising, becoming part of the storm’s updraft base and lowering it tremendously. This is a classic example of a storm modifying its own thermodynamic environment to ratchet down its own LCL!
Meanwhile, we saw intermittent chunks of ground-based scud, rising and slowly rotating. Nothing appeared too threatening from the standpoint of developing a real tornado, but it certainly kept my attention, in case the circulation ever started to tighten up to ominous levels. Some of them certainly had that look (zoom lens and enhanced digital zoom). I was pleasantly surprised and glad to see that nobody called these in as tornadoes, knowing that a lot of chasers were roaming about the area (based on Spotter Network icons). Another example a few moments later: (zoom lens and enhanced digital zoom).
The first supercell moved ENE over the LIC to our N, and gusted out. That turned our attention to the second (western or “Simla”) storm, which had sported intermittent, mostly non-rotating and ragged lowerings so far. A large, weakly rotating and precip-wrapping wall cloud developed as the storm drew closer, thanks to a a big mass of rain-cooled air entrained into the main updraft region. The supercell turned hard right, heading ESE and bearing the forward-flank core on course for the location where we comfortably had parked for about an hour. Time to head S again…
N of Punkin Center, we stopped to the updraft’s E again, this time for a short spell to photograph some beautiful clean-air storm structure. The supercell grew ever more outflow-dominant by the minute and accelerated its forward speed, so we couldn’t stay long. One more shot of the striking form of the storm, a marvelously textured swirl of gray shades and turquoise looming across the western sky, and it was time to bail over toward Aroya to open up some room between the storm and us. Along the way, its gust front briefly passed to the NE and to the N.
Approaching Aroya, we remembered a beautiful, old, abandoned schoolhouse we had seen on another chase nine years ago, having wished someday to photograph it before an approaching storm. This was our chance! The result is one of my favorite Great Plains scenery shots of the year so far.
Near Wild Horse, the supercell tried hard to enlarge a surface-based updraft, and appeared to succeed. The result was another spectacular display of texture and shading. Yes, that lowering at the inflow-outflow interface was rotating–slowly, but helically, giving me some concern for a brief tornadic spin-up. This one (zoom, and enhanced zoom of a zoom) compelled me to call, but thanks to being in one of the many tens of thousands of square miles of the Plains that constitutes AT&T’s 3% of America not served, I had no signal.
Fortunately, that feature quickly dissolved under relentless assault from cold outflow. Shortly after those shots, YF Umscheid motored up the dirt road toward us from a vantage closer to the feature, without reporting anything of consequence. We stayed ahead of the storm as it surfed outflow, driving E to Cheyenne Wells then S to Sheridan Lake. Between those burgs, we stopped to photograph the increasingly high, tiered, arcus-like eastern part of the base and a pretty array of sunset tones on the W side.
The storm now being a windbag and dust-bomb, we left it to get some lodging in LAA, setting us up for a long-desired revisit of Bent’s Fort and perhaps another chase opportunity the next afternoon off high terrain near and S of the Palmer. We found a nice, locally operated motel, then headed just SW of town to watch a short-lived, probably elevated supercell approach in the fading twilight. Elke was getting tired, so we went back to the motel, as the storm peppered town with abundant hail up to 1 inch in diameter (definitely smaller than the supposed “golfball hail” in the local storm reports).
A good lightning show beneath and on the back edge of the storm sent me back S of town again onto a different side road, this time to photograph the mammatus-festooned electrical show from the rear. As crickets and frogs sung loudly from every point of the compass, that amazing moist-earth smell refreshing my spirits amidst cool outflow air, the lace-lightning display continued with the storm’s eastward retreat. As a bonus wonderment, to cap a fine storm day, an orange moon rose beneath and then behind the distant updraft base. In the last shot, above the flanking line, you can see the anvil edge illuminated by the moonlight, in addition to the lighting by lightning within the storm.
After a long and satisfying chase day, we slept very soundly that night!
For your enjoyment, and as a reward for patiently reading this far, I’ve thrown together a couple of coarse animations from tripodded still-camera images shot that night: the first of the retreating storm with lace lightning, and the second of the wide-angle moonrise scene.
Beauty of Outflow Dominance
Nebraska Panhandle Bow Echo and NE Colorado Dry Downburst
16 June 11
SHORT: Fun day. Began in Hot Springs SD. Observed/photographed spectacular outflow-cloud structures (shelves, bands, stripes) with raging bow echo/haboob from BFF to N of SNY. Dropped S for peculiar, photogenic dust storm and sustained damaging gusts beneath high-based N rim of eastern CO MCS.
LONG: Back onto our storm-observing trek after a couple of amazing days in the Black Hills, flow aloft and at least marginal low-level moisture were beginning to juxtapose favorably once again to our south. We targeted the nearby Nebraska Panhandle for the prospect of high-based storms rolling east out of the higher terrain of eastern Wyoming. Browsing the morning maps, I was confident in upslope flow into that orography, along with afternoon storm initiation…but would there be too much, too soon, before the richer moisture could arrive in the evening? This scenario would mean outflow dominance.
Still, a conditional triple-point play in south-central KS was much too far away; and the mountains ain’t going anywhere. Blow increasingly moist air into them for enough time during daytime heating, and storms will form. Our goal: be downshear and see what evolves. High dew-point depressions portend shelf clouds, dust and high wind from storms; and sometimes that can be beautiful too.
And so it was…
We drove to favorite overlook SW of Angora upon which we had perched a few days before, watching the top 4/5 of assorted towers build and glaciate over the unseen mountains of eastern WY. Finally, when the storms started to coalesce and move off, one of which looked like an embedded supercell on radar, we headed W to the N edge of BFF to watch them roll downhill right at us. By then, the supercell was hard to distinguish in the onrushing wall of a dark, ominous, and increasingly well-defined squall line.
Reflectivity animations confirmed that the northern segment — basically due W of us, was bowing out. It was time to go outflow surfin’! Stay ahead of these, and they can offer some absolutely stunning cloud structures, such as the following three-piece view from between BFF and Minatare:
Looking NW: I’ve never seen a combination of lightness, darkness and radiating cirriform streamers like this before!
Looking W: Right into the teeth of Jaws. This is what a bonafide bow echo looks like when it’s “a-comin’ ta gitcha”. Check out the peculiar translucent strands, reminiscent of Silly String, festooning the otherwise featureless midlevel cloud deck. It might seem hard to photograph the strong dynamic range between the ink-dark core and the otherworldly apron of light above and beyond the shelf cloud; but not this time. This is how it actually looked, with no HDR bracketing necessary! I just had to meter for the area smack in the middle.
Looking SW: A classic view of an onrushing convective windstorm on the High Plains, this time with the Wildcat Hills lining the southwestern horizon.
We stayed ahead of the snapping maw of this storm — barely at time, I must admit — all the way to Bridgeport and beyond — before bailing S to let the road-deprived Sandhills have their turn at it. We got one last nice view of the atmospheric earth-mover raging to our NW before turning equatorward. What a gorgeous display of outflow-driven stormscapes we had witnessed!
Now it was time to get out of the way and figure out what to do with several more hours of daylight. Some storms had fired in NE CO, likely to be just as outflow-dominant and perhaps quite high-based. From SNY, it wasn’t that far away, and the next two days looked like potential Colorado storm targets anyway. As such, went back through Sterling again (retracing a good deal of our chase path from BFF three days before).
Unlike then, the Centennial State sky greeted us with a giant field of decaying storm material — virga dropping from various patches of agitation beneath a widespread anvil shield that once contained actual updrafts. N of Otis, a wall of wind slammed us in an impressive dry downburst, tearing dense channels of dust from plowed fields, buffeting the vehicle laterally with shot after shot of very localized wind-force lasting a second or so apiece, and making me struggle with the wheels to maintain positioning on the road. Good thing I had new tires for this season…
After a late rainbow and dinner at a familiar restaurant in Yuma, we bunked down there for the night, satisfied that we made the most out of a very windy storm day.
The human element of storm observing always has some interesting twists and turns too. We had a few loud neighbors at our motel, getting drunk and cussing in Spanish, and after a spell, I thought I might have to go out there and shut them up by request or otherwise. Fortunately for everybody, the former worked. The ringleader turned out to be cut from the cloth of my old barrio associates from long ago: he was wearing a shirt that said, in Spanish, “Don’t f___ with the DALLAS COWBOYS”. All day, I already had on my trusty blue-star cap. After some conversation about America’s Team, they retreated to their rooms, an elevated storm blew by with an intermittent show of close CGs, then off to bed everybody went.
Mesmerizing Mammatus Moments
Pritchett CO Supercell
Assorted Storms and Sunset from Boise City OK to Liberal KS
11 June 11
SHORT: From McPherson KS, drove almost directly to Pritchett Co, saw brief tornado with supercell due W but no photos due to untimely town transect. Supercell died, as did another SW of Boise City. Intercepted back side of Turpin storm, photogenic outflows from trailing squall line. Amazing mammatus sunset followed by fun dinner with CoD crews in LBL.
LONG:
This was a splendid first day on the High Plains for us in 2011! The day after hanging out in the beautiful Flint Hills, Elke and I headed W out of McPherson KS on the most direct route bypassing DDC to our target area of SE CO. We stopped along the way just briefly for fuel and to photograph an abandoned shed.
As we got to Syracuse KS, storms already had formed N of the RTN Mesa and W of US-287 in CO, our decision being to intercept the northern storms in a better road network, or the southern, newer storms that promised more unimpeded inflow for longer. We quickly decided on the latter and went S and W through Springfield to Pritchett.
Despite the densely wrapping hook echo on reflectivity displays, we didn’t expect anything substantially tornadic from the southern storm W of Pritchett, which by now had evolved into a mature, intense but high-based supercell. Alas, right as we started to enter town from the N, Elke noticed a conical funnel under the base to our distant W, protruding about 1/3 groundward, with a dust whirl beneath and thin, translucent debris sheath extending between dust whirl and condensation funnel. Of course, it had to be while we were trying to get through the only town within many miles; and I only caught a couple of brief but unmistakable glimpses between buildings. So did a cop; for staring that direction, he tore out of a nearby alley, sirens and lights blaring, briefly blocking the road before drag-racing Duke Boys style around a gas station and vanishing in a dust plume of his own making.
By the time we exited the S side of town, the tornado was gone–no photos, only memories. All visible vortex traces vanished into Colorado-thin air before I could call it in; but I did so anyway. The PUB forecaster seemed relieved that the warning verified, even if by a brief cheezenado.
We cruised W to an observing spot E of Kim, admiring mammatus to our N more than the increasingly featureless and drab storm now devolving to our W. A broad mass of showers and thunderstorms was growing to the older storm’s SE and dumping cold outflow into its inflow–certain doom for a once-powerful and briefly tornadic storm. Where next? Plenty of daylight, and we were storm-orphans. Cells were firing in the north-central Panhandle of OK, far away but reachable; and we could see the anvil of a persistent, solitary but undoubtedly very high-based cell to our S in NM. We had to go to Boise City for a chance to peek at either; so back we headed to the far fringes of our current home state.
Fifteen to twenty minutes spent at the front of a stopped line of vehicles, waiting for a flagman and pilot car on US-287, either cost us an inflow view of an intense supercell later or saved our necks; I’m still not sure which! By the time we got out of that, the remnants of the NM storm passed by CAO and came into view–not surprisingly, a widespread virga bomb dumping downbursts…albeit a wonderfully textured and photogenic virga bomb.
After fueling in Boise City, we targeted the supercell approaching LBL along the KS/OK border, glimpses of which we could see to our distant E and ENE ever since being stuck in the conga line on 287. Along the way to GUY, I couldn’t resist quick stops for two Great Plains specials: a striking scene of an abandoned barn high in late-day sunlight, as if sailing through an ocean of golden wheat, and from N of GUY, a high-based but beautiful Cb to our distant SE near Booker (the next storm W of what became the Follett supercell).
We headed NE from the GUY bypass toward Optima, greeted by the development and maturation of a pretty front-lit and under-lit arcus from the tail end of a short squall line to our W, NW and N. The earth, desperately dessicated and thirsty as you see, was about to get a much-needed drenching and quenching.
That’s what was happening behind the “Liberal-Turpin” supercell that, once we got to Hooker, was E of the road, sitting directly astride US-64 between Hooker and Turpin. Its meso wrapped across the highway to our E, blocking ready access. Police had US-54 blocked heading NE toward LBL, probably because of (by now) very old information about the supercell; so we turned E toward Turpin, creeping up to the back side of the raging HP monstrosity, able to see only scud and wrapping precip rolling southward in surges around the otherwise unseen mesocyclone. I knew what that meant, and considering past lessons, we weren’t about to core-punch it for any price or dare.
If we had arrived 15-20 minutes sooner, without the earlier traffic blockage N of Boise City, we might have made it; but then again, we also might have missed the amazing sunset show that followed. And that would have been a damn crying shame!
Instead of pondering could-have-beens, we admired still more outflow, this being the curiously lit E side of the arcus from the squall line to our N, looking past Hooker. We let that shelf roll over us for some eerie illumination, then plunged through the wet but harmless band of precip to get to our lodging in LBL.
As we entered LBL, it became glaringly obvious that a spectacular sunset show soon would ensue on the back side of the storm complex. The low, golden sun shone through the last curtains of trailing precip, and also through those, we already could see a field of mammatus aloft through chunks of ragged scud clouds evacuating eastward.
We secured our room keys from our favorite little motel there, then headed N of town for a gorgeous Great Plains sky of sunset mammatus that made the entire convoluted trip, every minute of it, worth its unforeseen destination in images such as this. Yet photos, beautiful as they may be, only can convey two dimensions of one sense: vision. This was not just a scene, it was an experience.
Land parched by drought sprang to life in a soothing blend of sound and aroma, cool and moist, as thoroughly refreshing to me as to the dozens of western meadowlarks celebrating in song across every compass point. I longed for the physical capacity to inhale ceaselessly, so as to miss not a millisecond of moist, earthen scent flowing across cool breezes, while sunset’s golden and reddening glow reflected first off the moving tapestry of mammatus clouds above, then off the land below and all around. For a fleeting few minutes, arms spread wide into the breeze, eyes gazing aloft, ears in stereophonic reception of the avian chorale’s cheerful spontaneity, smells of freshness and cleanliness and life, I ventured into a timeless place far outside the confines of self. It wasn’t the first time under such circumstances, either.
Let me assure you, when you are open to releasing your shackles of distraction and worry, and diving headlong into an experience of this nature, every sight, sound and breath swirls together as one multidimensional immersion in full appreciation reaching far beyond words and images. It’s a conscious decision, a gift to accept, an act of release and absorption, letting go and drawing in. These are the occasions when we let go unconditionally, in spiritual as well as sensory ways, bathing in a rejuvenation of sorts that cleanses all accumulated grime from even the farthest crevices of our being. If this is but an ephemeral and incomplete preview of heaven, count me in when the time comes.
Then came the slow descent back into reality, as the colors faded and a growling stomach begged for tangible nutritive sustenance. I noticed, via SpotterNetwork, that Paul Sirvatka and the CoD crew were headed into LBL from the S, so I called and invited them to join us for what turned out to be a fine dinner with enjoyable company.