First significant snow of the season!

This morning we awoke to 6 inches of snow in the foothills of CO at my house in Coal Creek. Tornado chances today look impossibly far away and to slight to warrant the 6 hour drive to central OK. Last night we chased in the Parker area where we got marble size hail, lightning and nice inflow structure.

Synapse Ducted Fan Jet!

Just took the first test flight of my new toy! It took a little adjustment to get it into the air but once airborne it was very fun to fly. The sound of the ducted fan is very cool! On a high speed flyby I went inverted and ripped one of the wings off! Too many Gs! Am now gluing it back on for a second flight. What a fun little jet, too small to carry video but a fun little practice plane.

Moab, UT Aerial Photographs

Our camp at Dead Horse Point, UT









Aerial photographs taken by the Wicked Witch 5 using a Nikon Coolpix 5.1MP camera. These shots were taken in the morning from our camp before we went mountain biking around Moab, UT. The winds stayed light long enough for me to get up to 1000' above the mesa and shoot off about 150 images. These are some of the best - enjoy!

Potentially a big day on Sunday Oct 7

90kt 500mb winds punching into western Kansas!


Compare these two images above to April 21st when we had 12 tornadoes in the TX panhandle: April 21 Texas Panhandle Outbreak


GFS breaks out a large area of precip on the CO/KS/NE border at 0Z Sunday evening


Nice band of 1500 CAPES into western Kansas up into the surface low in northeastern CO. If this setup can hold, I smell an outbreak of severe weather and potentially tornadoes!!

SEVERE WEATHER OUTBREAK POSSIBLE LATE THIS AFTERNOON

Update: Michael, Eric, Jon V and I headed up I-76 and stopped at Julesburg, CO mid afternoon to contemplate what to do once SPC dropped the tornado probs back to 2% and the cirrus shield was holding down the instability. We had some subway and watched a line of CU form to our west over Ft. Morgan up to near Big Springs, NE. We moved up to a hill east of Julesburg and stood in the strong flow, all the ingredients were there for some decent severe except the heating. The storm up by Big Springs went severe warned so we shot up there. It was racing away from us at 60 mph! This would be the theme of the afternoon, 50 - 65 mph storm motions! A small cell popped up with a vector on it heading straight to North Platte, NE. Mike O'keefe who was nowcasting for us let us know that it had baseball hail reported with it. That was all we needed to shoot away from our dying line of cells and try to intercept this baseball producer. As we were 20 mins away from North Platte we lost all daylight and the cell that passed right over town was now only producing nickel size hail. We stuck a fork in it and called it done and headed back to Denver. Was sure good to get out and chase a slight risk area so close to home though.

THIS HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK IS FOR PORTIONS OF WESTERN AND
NORTH CENTRAL NEBRASKA.
.DAY ONE...TODAY AND TONIGHT.
A POTENT UPPER LEVEL LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM WILL APPROACH THE OUTLOOK
AREA TODAY WITH THE ASSOCIATED COLD FRONT TO DROP SOUTHEAST
THROUGH WESTERN AND NORTH CENTRAL NEBRASKA TONIGHT. A MOIST AND
UNSTABLE ENVIRONMENT MORE TYPICAL FOR JUNE THAN LATE SEPTEMBER WILL
HELP FUEL THUNDERSTORM DEVELOPMENT LATE THIS AFTERNOON INTO
TONIGHT.
THERE IS A RISK OF SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS ACROSS ALL OF WESTERN AND
NORTH CENTRAL NEBRASKA. LARGE HAIL AND DAMAGING WINDS WILL BE THE
PRIMARY THREAT...ALTHOUGH A FEW ISOLATED TORNADOES MAY ALSO OCCUR.
A SEVERE WEATHER WATCH WILL LIKELY BE ISSUED LATER THIS
AFTERNOON...AND MULTIPLE SEVERE WEATHER WARNING ARE LIKELY TO BE
ISSUED INTO THIS EVENING. LISTEN FOR THE LATEST WEATHER UPDATES
CONCERNING THIS POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS STORM SYSTEM.
IN ADDITION...STRONG SOUTH WINDS TODAY OF 25 TO 35 MPH WITH HIGHER
GUSTS WILL ALSO IMPACT THE OUTLOOK AREA TODAY.

Storm in Yuma CO

The updraft is getting pinched out, hope it can survive!

Mileage: 394

Storm in Yuma county

this thing is showing great structure now!

Tornado watch!

Currently chasing this cell north of Burlington, CO the dryline is very strong here!

The Carlson Chasers have an upcoming appearance at the Denver Public Libraries Fresh City Life Nature Works Speaker Series on Monday Sept 24th from 6:30-8:00pm.

http://denverlibrary.org/programs/elements/nature.html#stormchasers

Details are also here in Denver's Westword Magazine to come out in hardcopy tomorrow:

http://www.westword.com/search/events.php?oid=373044

We are very excited about this talk and will be showing highlights of this and past year's chases as well as next spring's project!

Slight chance for severe over the CO/KS/NE border

HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK FOR WESTERN AND NORTH CENTRAL NEBRASKA.
THE MOST UNSTABLE CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED TO BE IN SOUTHWEST NEBRASKA BY LATE AFTERNOON. THE LOW LEVEL WIND PROFILES IN THE SOUTHWEST WILL FAVOR ISOLATED SUPERCELL DEVELOPMENT WITH LARGE HAIL AND DAMAGING WIND BEING THE PRIMARY RISK.

I have the WW3 plus flash memory camcorder in the car and if the RUC model continues to show precip in the CO/KS/NE area I'll be heading up I-76 after work today.

Wicked Witch 5 with Camera pod

Just flew the WW5 with the camera pod, pics soon! I had thought the camera pod hanging off the side of the glider would make it dip to the side but it went up straight and climbed without any problem.

Log arch at our house

Today we are getting our driveway paved. they were almost out to the road working from the garage to the street when I heard a loud crash. somehow they lifted to top log off the posts with the dump truck bed and the top log came crashing down. luckily no one was hurt but now there's the dilema of how to lift that log back up and secure it again. Can you say big a@@ crane!

Lightning Over Broomfield

Just got home from an awesome light show over Broomfield, Colo. I am so happy that all the Colorado chasers got shots and made it out to see the lightshow!

All the Carlson Chasers were out catching lightning tonight!

Michael got these lightning shots tonight that were shown on the 10pm weather tonight by Mike Nelson.

Some Lafayette Lightning

Had a weak storm right outside my window today with some brief lightning, so I got the video camera out. Here's some stills from the tape: