E-mail

Last Updated on Saturday, 09 January 2010 18:04 Written by Roger Hill

2004

User Rating: / 0
PoorBest 

June 16 was to be a day I would not soon forget. Strong upslope flow would provide deep moisture in southeast Colorado. Deep layer shear was more than adequate for tornadoes. By early afternoon, skies cleared and strong heating destabilized the atmosphere. A nearly stationary supercell developed southwest of Lamar and slowly drifted eastward. This storm produced at least 5 tornadoes and possibly more. Due to the poor road network, two tornadoes were not able to be photographed. At one point I had rain and hail falling on a dirt road that quickly turned to Vaseline slick mud!! I though I would NEVER get out!

Strongly sheared updraft with tail cloud feeding into it. This storm meant business!!! The photo was taken right after it produced a nice elephant trunk tornado.	Funnel cloud forms in rapidly rotating wall cloud!!!!! The cloud motion was fantastic!!!!!
Tornado!!! This tornado, complete with RFD dirt plume, was on the ground for approximately 7 minutes.	At nearly the same time as above, a landspout tornado forms to the south. If you look close, you can see a small nub funnel above the tornadic circulation.
About 15 minutes later another tornado forms. You can see the long slender funnel extending about 1/3 way to the ground with debris swirl under it. This tornado stayed in contact with the ground for about 5 minutes.	About 30 minutes later strong outflow developed as the storm became outflow dominant and merged with other cells to form an intense severe squall line.
What a hail core!!! This supercell had baseballs and larger in it!!	Beautiful shelf cloud forms as the now squall line races east into Kansas. At this point we called off the chase and went home.