What more can I say?

First things first: All photos are courtesy of my chase Partner Adam Penney.

Now on to the good stuff...

I guess day one was pretty good...three tornadoes and beautifully sculpted supercell we saw as it crossed into Kansas from Colorado. Eh...

We started the day targeting Springfield, Colorado, which is in the southeast corner of the state. We got to Dodge City, Ks and ate lunch, then proceeded on to our target area. We got a little rain and hail from some pop up cells along the way but didn't make much of it. We sat in Springfield for a bit as we watched some crapvection go up to our east. Figuring nothing was going to happen back where we were (we were wrong, storms did fire later and put down a nice tornado) so we headed back east. As we were heading east, we noticed the first tornado warnings on a storm up north along the border. Lucky for us, the storm was barely moving at all, so we were able to catch it. By the time we got there it looked beautiful, with a nice wall cloud and everything. We got out to watch the storm and proceeded to get blasted by outflow...which meant the storm was dead.


Wrong.

We were heading away to try to drop south to where we had been, as a nice cell went up over there, when we looked over our shoulder and saw a beautifully striated wall cloud and funnel poking out from under it. We stopped and watched as it dropped a nice stove pipe tornado.



The first tornado then dissipated, and we watched the storm cycle a bit, before putting down an even more robust, beautifully contrasted silver cone, complete with cloud to ground lightning strikes in the background.



Finally, this wall cloud looked finished, but a new one was developing off to its east, so we rushed east to meet up with it. Though I'm not sure, I think I saw another cone tornado off in the distance. A minute or two later, the storm dropped a GORGEOUS white rope tornado which had amazing motion up and down the tube. Unfortunately, we were not able to get any pictures of that tube.

After it dissipated, we continued on the storm as it looked like it was gonna cycle once more. However, the storm quickly became rain wrapped and turned the tables on us, as we were chased by a hail core that we found out later contained baseballs. I'm fairly sure I saw another fat cone/possible wedge tornado about a mile behind us, but in our haste we were unable to confirm it.

We left the storm after this to try to catch another storm as it popped up. Our first storm was simply too dangerous to chase as it was totally HP at this point. Our new storm quickly died, and we decided at this point to get back to Denver rather than chase an HP tornadic supercell after dark. The storm did cycle a few more times and put down more tubes, but I can't say I regret leaving it.

Finished the day with a beautiful mammatus display in Colorado. I'll get a picture of that up asap.

Not bad for my first chase day ever without a group.

Today looks interesting, as tornadic supercells are once again possible in Eastern Colorado. Any supercell that goes today has the possibility of dropping tornadoes as well as large hail. Gonna be another fun one.

Total mileage yesterday: 678.20
Total so far: 881.30

Oh one last thing. 7 pizza huts so far.