June 5, 2014 Haswell, CO supercell

Go south, young tour group.  We headed from Alliance to eastern Colorado for an upslope chase play.  After a healthy lunch in Sterling, we continued south to watch storm towers go up around Limon.  Nothing became particularly strong or interesting until the activity reached about Haswell.  Here, an updraft managed to become a bit discrete, rotate more strongly, and move almost due southward.  We stayed on the updraft’s east side for the most part, and observed strong easterly inflow at low levels.  The inflow sent thick dust plumes into the storm base, and eventually a decent wall cloud formed.  The supercell teased us as it dragged us southward on unpaved sections roads northwest of Lamar.  Near McClave, CO, the storm looked quite nice and baseball-sized hail was reported with it.  We were prime targets for the hail, so we scampered a little south of the Arkansas River and looked for shelter.  We came up to some guy’s large garage or shed, but he would not permit us to stick around.  We continued east into Lamar and avoided the big hail, fortunately!