Northern Burlington at Sunset
14 Jun 9
Eastern CO
SHORT: Saw high-based, outflow dominant storms from the distance in central Colorado, evaded eastward, waited for other storms to form but not long enough. Treated to wonderfully colored sunset at Burlington CO.
LONG:
Elke and I had a good breakfast at the Memories restaurant in Ft. Morgan (highly recommended), before dropping S toward Last Chance to await storm formation possibilities either on the CYS or Palmer Ridges. While sitting on a hilltop between Last Chance and LIC, we saw a very distant Cb explosion to the NNW, which I-Phone radar revealed to be a rapidly evolving supercell near Chugwater. That was out of reach, realistically, and so was the potential afternoon target along the boundary in SW KS.
We waited longer for Front Range and/or Palmer Ridge storms, dropping S to LIC for shade and better data access. While there, a tornado-warned line of storms quickly fired over the DEN metro area (producing that funnel near downtown and Coors Field). I was disinclined to run immediately after that activity, given its linear and likely high-based character.
We kept waiting at LIC for closer development, which did happen to our W and SW. Alas, it was linear too! Still no photos for the day yet…the activity was distant, but I already could see a shelf cloud emerging through some mild haze WNW-SE of us. I envisioned an unfriendly wall of outflow surging E across central and eastern CO, so we threw in the towel on active chasing for the day, perhaps a little too soon.
We arrived at ITR, got a nice and cheap motel room, and ate dinner at the slow and overpriced steakhouse there (not recommended!). We clung to hope for at least an interesting, shelfy sunset. Meanwhile a couple of brief supercells appeared near the tail end of the line before being munched by the meso-beta scale cold pool (these were the storms observed by BillR, MattC and MikeU).
Even the linear MCS appeared to weaken as it headed toward us, but we went to the N side of town to watch it roll past anyway. The sky was remarkably hazy for eastern CO, but once the gust front hit, the view cleared a good deal. A line-echo wave pattern (LEWP), with a brief and embedded supercell to our N, sent a rear-flank augmentation overhead just in time for the setting sun to shine through its precip curtains, opening up a brief bu dazzling splash of warm coloration in the rain curtains.
As the reds began to fade, the blues deepened in the nooks and crannies of the overhead shelf cloud’s turbulent underbelly, compelling a wide angle shot of the beautiful and unusual scene. It was a fantastic way to close out what had been a rather uninspiring storm day.
Stormy Sunset Salvation
9 Jun 9
Northwest Osage County OK
SHORT: Killed Kay County supercell as it moved into Osage County. Intercepted complex multicell/supercell cluster from two sides near Webb City, with brilliantly sunlit convection astern.
LONG:
A couple days of prognostications indicated the best play on this day would be the frontal zone from the central high plains to the Ozarks, preferably W of I-35 where the road network and terrain each are friendlier. Analyzing the situation from our prior night’s lodging in SLN, it became screamingly apparent the too-well organized morning MCS was spewing lots of cold outflow and shunting the effective frontal zone well southward across south KS. The western part was being shoved into drier warm sector air with more westerly sfc component, while at least the middle segment seemed to be interacting with a sfc moisture plume characterized by mid 60s to near 70s F dew points. A mesolow also was forming W of ICT, potentially concentrating convergence in its vicinity from the area S of HUT through the ICT region.
Armed with that concept, we (Elke and I in one vehicle, Two Fogels/Two Dogs team in the other) headed for our target area of south-central Kansas, with a great lunch at the IHOP in HUT along the way. Scattered Cu dotted the SE-SW horizon in a band obviously corresponding to the outflow boundary. As we waited for initiation near Cheney Lake Dam, the boundary continued to sag S, and the winds actually backed from ENE to N. Oh no…the mesolow not only was riding the slowly progressive boundary, but moving E thereon! Meanwhile the warm sector winds to our S still remained out of the SW, with a more southerly component hanging in there E of PNC to BVO. Time to move SE and stay ahead of the mesolow…
As we cruised E from Conway Springs, storms erupted to our E along the boundary, and to our S over north OK. The former would have a shot if it could stay on the boundary (big “if”), while the latter erupted in the hotter, deeper mixed boundary layer, but more discrete with less undercutting potential from the outflow boundary. By the time we reached WNF, we decided to go after the Okie storm, now right-moving over Kay County all by its little lonesome.
Dodging a few small, transient left splits, we maneuvered with steely determination E and S toward Webb City OK, in the beautiful, green-carpeted, southwestern Flint (Osage) Hills. The storm maneuvered E toward our location, into better storm-relative sfc winds, larger hodographs, and lower LCLs, with a stone cold death wish…for itself. Just as we got in good position to its ESE: shrivelus convectus minimus!
A messy complex of storms behind it, to our WNW-SW, became better organized, even sporting decent gate-to-gate mesos for short periods along a curving, embedded cyclonic shear zone. With sparse roads and a good W view (albeit with a hazy boundary layer), we let the initially distant assemblage of bases and cores — including one striated but small updraft cylinder — move our way. Very briefly — less than a minute, a finger of cloud condensate connected ground and ambient cloud base to the very distant WSW, but it was just too far away to ascertain whether this brief feature was rotating — a scudnado or the real deal. By the time I ran across the road for a better photo angle, it was gone.
After that, the storm cluster and its precursory anvil CGs drew closer, forcing our southward retreat to US-60. What appeared to be an anchor supercell on its SW flank grew feeble quickly (again, upon entering more backed surface winds and greater moisture…go figure), allowing us to “core punch” its moderately rainy and baseless carcass driving W on US-60.
By now, the sun was getting lower, and we decided to bunk down in PNC instead of driving up to 2.5 hours out of the way (to home), given the more western location of the next day’s forecast area.
The best part of the chase day, as often happens, came behind the storms, near sunset. The newly soaked, rolling green hills and valleys smelled a fresh and invigorating earthy aroma. Mild, moist air came to life with the calls of bobwhite quail and many wild songbirds, while a couple dozen nighthawks arose from the fields and flew off toward the setting sun.
Out across the big eastern sky, a beautiful double-rainbow festooned the back of the retreating storms to our E, followed by marvelous layers of light and shadow across the sides and tops of big new towers forming another anchor storm. Across a few fleeting minutes, the sunlight tones warmed considerably, reflections off the big towers in turn lighting those beneath and casting ever deeper hues across the scene. Finally the show ended, but not before a brief blaze of bronze from the final rays of the day.
It was a neat way to salvage an otherwise disappointing chase day and an egregious atmospheric underperformance compared to the 15% sig-tor outlook that had been issued for central KS early in the day. 
Colorful Stormy Skies, Day and Night
Southeast Panhandle of TX
12 May 9
SHORT: Mostly multicellular storms observed from Matador to Memphis TX by day, yielding fantastic sunset scenes, then a brilliant and long-lived electrical display after dark.
LONG: My forecast target was the Caprock area somewhere near its prospective intersection wit the warm front, which looked most likely to be along or just S of the latitude if CDS, and N of the latitude of LBB. I wasn’t expecting raging supercells given the weak effective shear and lack of more robust midlevel winds; but I thought we at least had the possibility for brief ones. The very stout cap was a huge concern too, so I also was hoping for a little dollop of good ole Panhandle Magic (As Bobby P has been wont to say, “It’s May, it’s the Panhandle…chase!”).
Elke and I left Norman after a rather late lunch, confident that the capping would hold off initiation in that area until after 1700 CDT. It doesn’t always happen; so I love it when a forecast comes together.
Along the way, we stopped to photograph some abandoned structures, walls constructed of native Cambrian granite cobbles that basked in muted sunlight, surrounded by wheat fields, with the backdrop of the Wichita Mountains for texture. I didn’t stay long to appreciate the scene or do more close-up photography, though. Despite the mid-afternoon sun and stiff breeze, dozens of fat and ravenous mosquitoes swarmed me with a speedy and bloodthirsty attack every bit the equal of their notorious cousins in the Everglades or the Minnesota North Woods.
By the time we approached from the E, as if on cue, turkey towers started bubbling over Turkey TX. Although these attempts didn’t survive, thicker clumps of towers did to their SSW, in Motley County (see towers and flowers). Consider the cap broken! We hung out at some picnic tables in Matador for at least half an hour, eating Allsups burritos, watching assorted other chase vehicles pass through, and waiting for the rather messy, multicellular convection to become better organized. It did, but in a linear sense, and began to accelerate NE toward the CDS-Memphis area.
Off we went the same way, passing right by the same Stitch Ranch entrance that Rich and I used as a staging point for observing the April 29 eastern supercell. Nearby, I stopped to photograph a thick, partly rain-diffused shaft of sunlight beaming through a cloud gap and onto the distant rolling prairie, an orphan of brilliance amidst the stormy shadows.
The messy structures continued until shortly before sunset, when Elke and I decided to move from front to back side of the complex for photographic reasons. We grabbed a quick dinner in Memphis then headed E on TX-256, past some other chasers, to a pleasantly lonely, gravel side road near the Hall/Childress county line.
What a marvelous setting! Warm tones of the low sun painted a brilliant rainbow segment across the deeply bronzed west wall of the storms. The freshly soaked ground gave off that earthy, moist aroma of a formerly dry land newly satisfied. Bird calls of all kinds carried across the cool breezes. Two bobwhite quail carried on a conversation past us as we admired the fiery sunset scene in the western sky; while in the south, varyingly colored low clouds drifted before a canvas of a higher deck with a different hue still (wide angle and somewhat later).
There’s no experience quite like a Great Plains sunset right behind storms. I hope those photos convey at least a small measure of that.
Then came a dazzling display of atmospheric electricity on the back side of the complex, from the southeast Panhandle all the way across southwest Oklahoma and back to Norman. Lightning filaments raced through a mammatus canopy that spread upshear of the complex, giving many storm observers (from us to the V.O.R.T.EX.-2 crews in CDS) a memorable show. We stopped near the TX/OK border to shoot a little of the action, with Elke capturing one of the most crisply defined sets of nighttime mammatus I’ve seen in a photo. This nearly daylight-bright discharge spread overhead and beyond, raising a distinctive, simultaneous crackling noise in some nearby high-voltage power lines. We soon headed home, content to watch occasional flares of electrical brilliance across the rainy night sky.