June 5th

Western NE & WY

Not much to talk about on this chase, I'm sure you've all seen the video of the tornado over and over and over again on The Hippie, I mean Weather Channel anyway. Sean McMullen and myself started the day with a target around Sterling CO, along the way that target kept getting bumped further and further north. By the time I had reached the region, Sydney NE became the primary target, though I did stop in Julesburg CO for a while were we visited with Terry Schenk, Greg Guise and David Hoadley. Still, I was hopeful of something forming in the high plains of CO and tracking northeast at me. I noted the development of storm along the front range of WY, but held my ground and a little hope that something would still come of the area to my SW, where parameters were slightly more favorable for tornadoes. After holding out for what ended up being about 10 minutes to long, I decided that it was likely the cap would win out over NE CO, and I raced after the storm to my NW in WY. I made it just in time to catch the tornado, though I was still a good distance from the storm. After watching that tornado dissipate, I watched the storm for a couple hours try and try again to produce, though it just never could quite get it done. It was a gorgeous storm and as always amazing country, however this day yielded some of the worst chaser convergences I have ever seen (even way out there). I was somewhat disappointed by that, as part of what I love about chasing in the high plains is the lack of human influence, when there are 1000 chase vehicles running around, that aspect quickly disappears. Probably the biggest thing to come out of the day was the fact that I added another state to the list of states in which I have seen a tornado, I can now say I’ve seen a tornado in WY (albeit a forgettable one).

I shot only video of the Tornado and no pictures as I was driving towards it. And just as I found a spot to pull over and see the ground halfway decent the tornado lifted, this is shortly after it roped out.

Despite the mass number of chasers, for a while I managed to not run into anybody excluding David Hoadley, whom we kept running into.

Several Attempts, but nothing ever came of them...

RFD tried to cut in during the following sequence of pics...

Thought it was pretty neat contrast...

Terry, Greg and Sean enjoying the storm...

Eventually we jumped East to new storms that were Exploding, these storms were beasts, they did everything except produce tornadoes.

Amazing updraft and circulation...

Storm Continued to chug along...