This was the second-to-last chase day for Tour 5. The tour would end in Oklahoma City on Sunday, the 7th, but I had to fly back home from Denver late in the afternoon on the 5th. Chris Gullikson assumed the tour director duties, and I followed the tour group west from Norton, KS, into eastern Colorado. Fortunately for me, the risk for severe weather this day was not too far from Denver. I might get to see a storm before I had to be at the airport! Unfortunately for me, there looked to be a decent tornado risk, and that would be primarily while I was sitting in the terminal and/or sitting in the plane. Oh, well. I had to work a couple of weekend shifts in order to keep my part-time weather observing job at Point Mugu.
South of Strasburg and Bennett, we came up to an early-afternoon supercell that had been tornado-warned (it produced a tornado east of Parker around 1 p.m. MDT). The base was very low, the RFD cut was impressive, but it passed by us to the NNE without much of an inclination to produce again.
The day was young and good conditions for severe weather beckoned to the east, from Last Chance and Limon to the Kansas border. But, I had to say my goodbyes and head on in to Denver. The tour group was on a tornadic supercell later, near Cope, but the tornado was shrouded by precipitation from their vantage point.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.