Michael, Eric, Christian, Joe and I wait at the McDonald's parking lot in Cheyenne, WY for hours until the cells to the north start to pop from Chugwater, WY to the north. They don't look like much at first and the MD issued indicates that this initial activity will only weaken the cap for a later wave that will be the main show. Text messages from Randy Denzer and Mike O'Keefe give us a heads up that Reed Timmer and the TIV are up there and seeing a wallcloud forming. We go ahead and decide to head up there and check out the towers. Little did we know that this would be the main show about to start!
Classic flying eagle radar image with large hook. Notice Michael coming in from the south. I had shut off my spotternetwork to use my last USB port for Delorme to navigate in from the north. (radar grab by Randy Denzer)
4:22pm MDT LaGrange, WY tornado!
Bad roads and a poor decision to approach the storm from I-25 and ChugWater, WY exit put us into the core with BASEBALL sized hail!
We try to hide under a pine tree at an old service station but my new car is badly damaged on the hood, roof and cracked windshield.
As baseballs continue to fall we get a great view of an amazing tornado.
This tornado will become the most heavily sampled and studied tornado in history. VORTEX 2 crews were all over this tornado!
The Subie took a pounding today and had we not gotten under a huge pine tree to shield the car it would have been alot worse! The hood is the worse damage, if I repaired that the car would be almost good as new again. I likely will not get it fixed because I would just have to stress again about hail cores! (photo by Joe Pohlen)
Tornado was preliminarily rated an EF1
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