4-9-11 Local - Cheyenne, WY Small Hail

Skinner informed me that there was about 500 j of cape after 1pm today and to look for some convection. I was a little doubtful about anything that interesting due to the low energy, but the LI and helicity values did seem interesting. I left the house after a long day of developing convection over the hills as one cell was moving towards Cheyenne from the southwest. I went to a high spot I know and then got hit by blueberry sized hail, and saw some interesting convection indeed. Not bad for a chase at home literally.






Video Here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t84n3nqbcVg

Cold blasting gust front - Greeley, CO

Tuesday I left the house it felt about 55 degrees and felt warm and calm, I drove about 5 blocks noticing the clouds looking convective and intense. Very quickly it dropped what felt about almost 20 degrees and the winds were gusting an estimated 35 Knots. I took some pics of the convectiveness and the defined boundary and skinner archived these radar and sat for me after i texted him about it. You can see the crazy front on radar and what looks to even be some 35 dbz in there, possibly just some heavier rain, as it was raining. Later that evening it started to rain pretty hard and then sleet.

In the pics below you can see that the base of the clouds is defined in some, I was watching strong rising motion!, and also what sort of resembles mammatas clouds

Largest Hailstone

(The new Record Holder from Vivian, SD on July 23rd 2010 on the left (Actual Hailstone), and the replica of the old record holder from Coffeyville, KS on the right)

Today I had the privilege to go down to Boulder at UCAR to see the Largest Hailstone in US History and could be the largest in Recorded World History. Thanks to Becca, and her friends in her line of work we were able to see this hailstone before it goes back to the owner for sale on ebay. We also got to see the replica of the Coffeyville, KS hailstone which was the previous record holder to the Aurora, NE hailstone, which we got to see slices of.

(Radar Image of the Vivian, SD Cell)

Boundary Action

A nice looking boundary this afternoon left over from yesterday's storms, taken from Nunn, CO (see August 6th chase)

Recap

Check back in a couple weeks, I will start recapping the season with more video and picks. I have found it hard to keep up the blog this year but some interesting footage will come soon.

Independence Day Chase

Flooding in Kimball

Video coming soon




I know its been a while since my last posting, I will post more of what happened in June soon. I was out of my computer for a while. Today was great with my chase in Wyoming and Nebraska. Had tornado warnings out all over the place, when I saw the RUC at 5am this morning I said woah today is going to be epic, and that wasnt far from the truth. With as many supercells and tornado warnings as there were. I saw a possible large tornado near Chugwater, WY earlier in the day. I say possible because the bluffs were in the way and I could only see the top of what seemed to be a stovepipe tornado. I chased the second cell accross Hwy 313 to 85 and ran into Verne Carlson. From there we watched for a bit until outflow killed it. Then went south to the cell that developed northeast of Cheyenne. Once we got really close verne and I outside the car caught a rapidly developing funnel, and then it touched down on the ground for a brief time. With Becca on my text chat on the comp, and her as coordinator and then operating radar, I was able to deliver fast and detailed reports which helped out with accurate warnings. After the breif tornado, decided to punch the big white reflectivity on radar to see what the hail would bring. I got golf ball hail, I imagine it was probably bigger just a bit earlier in the storm cycle.

My SPC Torn Report

2309

7 N BUSHNELL

KIMBALL

NE

4133

10389

SPOTTER REPORTED TORNADO ON GROUND FOR ABOUT 30 SECONDS.

CO Hail May 26th