Saturday, June 21, 2008

June 20th 2008 Eastern Colorado


This chase was perfect, I didnt even expect to go on this chase. I was hanging out just keeping an eye on the weather. Around 4pm I decided to head out to these high based cells that were forming off the Cheyenne ridge and headed southeast to the east of Greeley. I went out and just sat under high based storms knowing they would move into higher dew points. These cells converged and created a beautiful super cell. Skinner was my now caster/navigator from the hospital, he had to navigate to a pin point for me because the RFD and Tornado was on my bumper!! I stayed in front of it from wiggins where I got tennisball size hail and then I got caught in the RFD where 70-80mph winds almost tipped my car. I then headed south southeast to work my way to Agate, CO where 9 news took these pictures and Cory Green ran into me where he rode the rest of the storm chase out with me. We paralleled the storm from limon southeast to a rest stop where the tornado warning expired so we waited for the hail core to pass over us. I got my helmet and goggles on and walked around in the hail. It was pretty funny cause Roger Hill's tour group was parked next to us, I bet they said hes crazy! It was great because I was always in the right spot at the right time, thanks to skinner as well. He saved my life a couple times! Skinner is editing the video right now so it should be up on here soon, keep checking!

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Chasing today, Home town or West Kansas

We are trying to decide if we want to go to the favorable area in Northern KS, or stay at home due to the tornado risk here, the dewpoints are in the 50s in Greeley and there is a southeast wind component. The vertical motion is high and the setup looks similar to Thursday May 22nd when Windsor got hit. That is our delima, as soon as we would go east...wedge in Greeley.