(finally getting around to these summaries for the 2024 chases out of Denver…posted in December of 2025)
May 25, 2024/Tornadic Supercell near Hazleton, KS
Start: OKC/End: Pratt, KS
This was an in-between tours day when we (myself and Tempest Tours staff) take the vans and my Xterra from Oklahoma City to Denver. This was advertised as a high-end severe weather day just east of the dry line in KS/OK/TX. Intense tornadoes and giant hail were possible, if not probable. We didn’t need to be in Denver until late the next day, so it was easy to turn this into a chase day on our way north and west. From a chase perspective, the day was a bit of a bummer given the high expectations. My group witnessed a good supercell with a big rotating wall cloud and a rain-wrapped tornado between Hazleton and Anthony in southern Kansas. Some chasers observed a pretty tornado around the Woodward, OK, area this day, and there was a lot of high-end severe and tornadoes later at night in the DFW area and along the AR/MO border. Anyway, it was fun to have a storm to look at for a bit on the drive…and I kept the vans safe from giant hail.
The shots above, from the Canon DSLR, show the beefy wall cloud (to our west) and then a suspicious rain-wrapped action area (to our north). A couple of the shots of the rain-wrapped area are enhanced quite a bit to show what may be a tornado. There was tornado-like damage reported from this area at the time.
Once the supercell passed by to our east, at quite a good clip, it appeared wet and very HP-ish. It was starting to get rained on by a nuisance storm just to its SSW. We let it go and headed to Pratt for the night. Some iPhone shots below.
May 28, 2024/Supercells near Muleshoe, Morton and Levelland, TX
May 26, drive from Pratt to Denver
May 27, first day of Tour 5, a position day Denver to Clayton, 327 miles
May 28 Start Clayton/brunch Front Porch in Texline/End Lubbock/366 miles
Tour 5 began on the 27th, and we took a scenic route across the Raton Mesa, via Kim, to our motel in Clayton, NM. Here are some iPhone pics from the 27th.
On May 28, we scooted south on 385 to catch some nasty supercells west of Lubbock. These were pretty, but never seemed to offer much of a tornado threat. It was one of those days when stuff went up a little bit early, and a lot of storms meant plenty of messy interactions. We wound up looking for shelter for the vehicles in Levelland as a tail-end Charlie supercell approached the town. It spit out “DVD-sized” hailstones a couple of miles to our north.
And, the iPhone pics and radar screenshots below.
May 29, 2024/Lamar, Colorado Supercell
Start: Lubbock/lunch: Cici’s Pizza in Amarillo/End: Guymon, OK/537 miles
The pics from the Canon camera (below) show some junky high-based stuff, and at dusk a pretty rotating updraft. This was south of Lamar.
iPhone pics and radar screenshots below.
May 30, 2024 Seminole/Denver City Texas Supercells
Start: Guymon, OK/Lunch Grab and Go at Love’s in AMA/End: Seminole, TX/492 miles
This day was a bit of a bummer as we were not quite able to get far enough south in time for the decent tornado event near Midland and Odessa, near and a little south of I-20. We were delayed a bit getting out of Guymon, and the boundary to reach kept creeping southward, away from us, through the southern Texas Panhandle. Around Andrews we had a great look at the new, strong convection to our SSE, near Odessa, maybe 30-40 miles distant. This storm was on the boundary and looked to have the best tornado chances, and it did indeed produce. But it was drifting away from us and I figured that it would be an effort in futility to get into position on it to see anything. With new, strong storms forming more closely back to our northwest, I turned around and we chased the non-tornadic storms near Seminole and Denver City. This sported good structure and even a weak, dusty spin-up tornado beneath a storm base. The highlight was the sunset light as dusk approached.
iPhone pics and radar screenshots below. The first two show the soon-to-be tornadic storm near Odessa and Midland…the storm that we wanted to be on but let go. Note: It seems that the radar times are out of sequence with respect to the the iPhone images. The radar images run late. The radar images belong earlier in these blocks of iPhone pics. Lame? Yes. That’s how my iPhone has them sequenced.
May 31, 2024 Supercell near Hugo, Colorado
Start: Seminole, TX/lunch: Ranch House in Amarillo/End: Lamar, CO/588 miles
A rather dreadfully long drive northward resulted in a semi-decent supercell intercept on the south side of the Palmer Divide in Colorado.
iPhone pics below
June 1, 2024 Sterling, Colorado Supercell
Start: Lamar/lunch: Mom’s Kitchen in Otis/End: Fort Morgan/403 miles
(June 2, end of tour, Fort Morgan to Denver)
After lunch in Otis we headed westward to catch the new activity coming off of the Cheyenne Ridge. A few hours later we finally had something that wasn’t junky, near Sterling. A nice lowering and some organization were apparent, with a rainbow afterwards to signal the end of Tour 5.
iPhone pics below
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