5/31/2010 - Colorado/Oklahoma Long-lived Tornadic Supercell

Well, the atmosphere definitely made lemonade out of lemons on this Memorial Day. We had a Limon Holiday Inn Express briefing at 10:30 am, with a target of the Kim to Springfield to Campo region of southeast Colorado. Target featured good cape, marginal shear, and good upslope along the Raton Mesa. As we ventured southeast out of Limon, we were somewhat surprised to see convection already developing on the Palmer Divide in Las Animas County – well to our south, yet in our target area. We pushed south, all the while keeping a radar and visual eye on the storm to the south. I think the early convection and anvil production was critical – it assisted in holding down the surface temperatures and preventing mixing. This kept our dewpoints up, dewpoint depressions down, and ultimately our LCLs manageable for tor production.

We grabbed a quick lunch and some van juice in Lamar. Intercepted the now maturing supercell west of Lamar where we watched a long-lived truncated cone produce numerous ground whisps and eventually condensation to the ground (tornado 1). Concurrently, along the RFD, another needle funnel developed and apparently (per Mike Umsheid, whom we met up with a couple times and had a closer vantage point) touched down (tornado 2). The storm cycled and cycled west and southwest of Springfield. Luckily, we could sit back and enjoy it in all its glory due to its extremely slow southeastward motion (on the order of about 5-15 mph, I’m guessing). We eventually found ourselves south of Campo with a beautiful, somewhat high-based, wall cloud rotating toward us and almost over the top of us. An exhilarating feeling as the landscape at the time featured a roaring southbound coal train as well. As the circulation was on top of us, we decided to scoot south. Headed toward the Cimmaron River, where we stopped and watched the circulation quickly (and somewhat surprisingly) tighten and produce a funnel and then long-lived tornado (tornado 3). Our perspective afforded a view of the RFD – complete with cyclonic (tornadic) and anticyclonic pairs – and sun basking the tornado as it crossed the road about 5-8 miles to our north. The tornado was one of the more picturesque I’ve witnessed. Oh, and so slow and long-lived. Great stuff! It kept getting wrapped in rain, but then the rain would subside and allow us a view – once again -- the ghostly white tornado. Eventually, we lost it in the rain and hail shroud to the north and east so we traversed east toward the Keyes, OK area where we once again pulled over, watched it funnel, and produce a long-lived tor (tornado 4). The storm at this stage was simply magnificent. Absolutely stunning stretched-wide mothership appearance with a nice honkin’ tornado coming out the rear. Ahhh … what a treat. Eventually that tornado roped out and we scooted east again. Unfortunately, our road network options became limited hereon due to a preceding storm that made everything a sloppy mess on the dirt (eh, mud) roads. We stopped one more time to get a view of the beautiful supercell at sunset. We then found ourselves sandwiched between the primary supercell, convection to the east, and new convection moving up from the south. Got into some marginally severe hail and intense winds west of Guymon, but with the aid of nowcasting from Paul Sirvatka, we were able to get out without sustaining any damage. Caught a late night dinner in Hugoton and made our way up to Garden City, where we checked into the hotel at midnight. What a day! A day I honestly didn’t see coming!
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Tornado #1. Truncated cone for most of its life, but did have intermittent wisps to the ground and condensation to the ground toward the end of its life cycle.

Tornado #2.

Almost tornadoes again ... but, hard to confirm.

Great lightning shot by Heather.

Majestic tornado #3 starts.

Beautiful image courtesy of Heather.

Awesome shot by Joe.

Tornado #4 and awesome structure.

Gif animation of stills illustrating tornado #3 and cool RFD processes.

Gif animation of stills illustrating the supercell at sunset.

Time lapse of the video I shot this day. Not sure why google is compressing stuff so much these days. I'll upload to youtube soon ...