Heading south on SR71 from Limon, CO to intercept a very small cell coming east out of Pueblo, CO. The cell dramatically increases in intensity around 23:18z. A new cell forms to it's south about the same time. The southern cell looks like it will dominate at times but the northern cell is the one that goes on to produce the brief tornado below.
Thanks to JR Henley of WDT for sending out this screen grab from our iMapTracker. Here you can see I was on the northern storm which visually looked more intense and I felt (correctly) would be more likely to produce! Time above is 23:55z just north of Ordway, CO
Wallcloud forming east of Ordway, CO around 00:29z looking back west from southeast of Sugar City, CO on CR31
Wallcloud gets stronger! 00:32z looking west from southeast of Sugar City, CO on CR31
Scuddy wallcloud with tornado embedded inside! 00:34z on CR31
Tornado emerges from the scuddy wallcloud and is moving my direction! RFD driven golfball (and Larger) hail is pounding my car and I have to retreat back to a cottonwood grove.
Tornado! 00:35z southeast of Sugar City, CO on CR31
Base Velocity scan from GR3 at 00:42z after the tornado became rain wrapped and passed my road. My true location was down by Michael Phelps icon. Once I start streaming my GR3 does not always update quickly.
Gene Moore also saw this tornado, here is his post from StormTrack:
We can verify an intermittent tornado occurred from near Ordway to south of Sugar Springs. What we witnessed was the same feature as shown in Verne's post. There was a large funnel with a clear space just above the ground. It extended rotating condensation to ground and condensation vortices intermittently; one passing about 100 meters ESE of us which I thought was too close considering the conditions. We never saw it "planted" but the hail fog did obscure the subject at times.
I was with Klipsi and the French chasers with Swiss chaser Dean Gill from the Swiss National Weather Service. We endured a horrific barrage of hail to stay with the storm and finally threw in the towel and parked under a tree. We caught up with the storm and rode the south flank then core punched on #50 north of John Martin Reservoir as hail turned the road white. I'll add the tornado shots as time permits.
2009 Tornadoes: 13
Lifetime Tornadoes: 112
2 comments:
Nice grab, Verne!!! Might want to let the Weather Service know if you haven't already. They have nothing for reports yesterday.
DC
I'd be really interested to see what you guys had around 5:45-50pm MDT. We saw what looked like a large stovepipe tornado, but we could not see all the way to the ground. Our position was about 3 west of Arlington on CR F looking southwest.....the funnel/tornado was well off in the distance towards the Sugar City/Ordway/Crowley area. I'll post video captures on my site in a few days and maybe you can tell me what we saw.
There was a ton of precip in that area for several minutes before this thing popped out...I'm wondering if maybe we caught a glimpse of an earlier tornado from the same storm that nobody else saw.....tons of rain around it and we could only see it for a minute or so before we lost it in the rain again.
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