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Last Updated on Sunday, 10 January 2010 00:55 Written by Roger Hill

2002

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Left Denver at noon headed for southeast Colorado where more sunshine and a boundary were present. By the time I reached Limon, I already saw thunderstorms explode to my south. So I blasted quickly south on 287 and by the time I got to Eads, the first TOR was issued. All I could see was this electrified wall of white in front of me and of course knew what it meant. I hit the core at 2:55 PM north of Wiley and was greeted with tennis ball sized hail on my already cracked windshield. So I pushed through it. South of it, just north of Wiley, I saw a large slowly rotating wall cloud, perfectly bowl shaped. At about 3:15 PM I could see a rotating dust bowl under it. Not a great dust bowl but I would call it a tornado. It persisted for about 5 minutes. 

Then south I went cutting through dirt roads (dry) to get back southeast of the updraft. The updraft was a highly striated updraft at least 10 miles across with a VERY LARGE laminar beaver tail streaming in from the southeast. I made it just southwest of Lamar when I noticed an occlusion taking place and strong wet RFD winds wrapping around the occluded meso. Soon a white cone tornado formed. The debris cloud was entirely of dark brown dirt. It stayed on the ground for about 6 minutes before it dissipated. Then I made it to 287 and zig zigged east/southeast to stay in front of the meso and be able to look down the notch of this now HP storm. A landspout formed to my west, about 10 miles northwest of Twin Buttes and persisted for 17 minutes. The storm continued to march south/southeast, slowly and became an electrified monster!! I called off the dogs and went back through the core to get to 287 again and headed north to get back home.

That is when all things came to a stand still. I passed a bridge where water was flowing up to the bottom and a person's house was flooded about 4 ft deep. I figured I could make it back to Lamar (only 7 miles), but the road was closed due to flash flooding in front of me. I sat there for 3 hours blocked in front and back by flooding. Hail was piled up at least 6" deep across the fields.

Check out the images below.

Storm produces first dust bowl tornado.	It also produces golf ball size hail.
Totally undercut here.	Another shot of the undercut meso.
Meso reorganizes and intensifies.	Nice clear slot forms and funnel also forms.
Fairly substantial cone tornado southwest of Lamar.	Landspout forms under developing updraft on flanking line.
Storm gets out of hand precip wise.	Totally an HP storm now.
My goodness, stay away from this!!!	And this!! Hail to a half foot deep!!