Walker's Travels: 6/5/2015 - COD Day 8

Friday, June 5, 2015

6/5/2015 - COD Day 8 - Vona, CO Tornadoes

We woke in Colby, KS and targeted the Palmer Divide. As we drove toward Limon near lunch time, tornado warnings were already flying to our west south of Watkins, CO. Forgoing lunch (for the time), we raced west to intercept the storms moving northeast off the Palmer. We finally caught a relatively strong cell south of Bennett. Though the cell wrapped up nicely, we were lacking strong inflow. Things got messy very quickly after this, so we pushed east along the interstate where we caught a quick gas station-lunch and fill-up. Matt and I decided to blow off the Palmer stuff, hoping that new storms east along I-70 near Hugo would tap into the better environment east toward the KS border. We did stop at Genoa for a quick lecture on hail, which spotted the ground from a prior core. Blasting east, we set our sights on a new cell forming along the interstate to our east that would clearly ingest the best air in the region. Despite hitting construction, we finally made it to Stratton and raced north eventually getting a glimpse of the wall cloud and a very nice cut. As we drove north and approached a ridge, it began to tornado. We pulled immediately and let the group take in the setting. It was a beautiful scene, with a tornado that grew to a quick wedge, complete with a collar cloud. A new meso formed to the east of the tornado and, as we drove north, provided an excellent example of meso hand-off. We stopped a couple more times, witnessing two more quick tornadoes in a rapidly rotating wall cloud sheath affiliated with the newer meso. We eventually called it as storm interaction and (muddy) road network made for difficult chasing. We grabbed steaks at Montana Mikes before a late night talking about our experience in the Sleep Inn lobby. A good day!