Less than a week since my last disappointing chase on the Palmer I am ready to forgive and forget as she didn’t let us down today!  Great local chase with my friend Carl Wells which yielded a quick, brief tornado just W of Limon and some intense moments near Genoa later in the day.

We headed out of Denver right around 11AM and grabbed a bite to eat in Bennett.  We sat there for awhile and after some quick meso analysis we could clearly see that the more unstable air with better low level shear was making it’s way closer to the Limon area, so that’s where we went.  Limon was chaser central today as the entire Vortex 2 armada was there along with 5 or 6 tour companies and about 15-20 other cars of chasers staging for the afternoon.  We waited there for about an hour or so and were really tempted to make a play on the cell that moved through Denver and was heading up I-76.  That cell looked like a beast but I knew it only had a brief window to produce a tornado as it was moving N into a less than stellar atmosphere.  Sure enough, it sputtered out but not before littering the metro area with some gorilla hail.

Proud that I had resisted that temptation, patience finally paid off as a cell started to fire just N of Colorado Springs.  This was going to be the storm, I just knew it.  So we blasted out of Limon and headed back W to the Deer Trail exit where we were going to sit and wait for it.  At this point though, my patience was all worn out, so we went W out of Deer Trail and negotiated some dirt roads that took us S toward the storm.  At this point it had just gone severe warned.  After I saw this:

Jaggedy wall cloud...

Scuddy-ish...

I knew we had made a good decision about staying with this cell!  We got spit out of the dirt road network onto highway 86 in the Matheson area where the cell which was now tornado warned, had right turned and was on top of us.  We raced E on 86 beating the core of the storm back to I-70 where we decided to head back to Limon.  We got through town and headed out highway 24 where visibility of the storm which now had a hook echo on it, would be a little better.  This is where I believe we witnessed our quick touch down.

It was hard to be sure with the wrapping RFD...

Precip was wrapping around the whole thing, so visibility wasn’t the greatest.  We continued on about  a half mile more where the visibility was better…

We could see dust being kicked up under the base for about 30 seconds!

As it quickly lifted, you could still see some ground circulation.

Shortly after this, a few other chasers had made a report of a brief tornado so I’m inclined to believe my eyes weren’t deceiving me.  Anyway, merely seconds after this, the storm had caught back up to us so we U-turned and got back through Limon and jumped back on I-70 heading E.  We finally got out of precip and since the storm had gone back to it’s northeast movement, we were able to get off at the Genoa exit to have another look.  Typical of tornadic supercells, this one also had moments where it weakened only to retighten and look good again.  We went N of Genoa where their tornado sirens were blaring and found a good pull off to take some structure photo’s.  At one point we had 2 separate meso’s both with insane rotation very close to our position.  I had successfully scared Carl to death!  Hahaha…

Low hanging meso #1 to our left...

Mean, dark looking meso #2 to our right...

The Timmermobile flew by us on their way to intercept and that’s when we knew it might be time to reposition to a better place.  Seconds after we loaded up the tripods, the sky turned olive green and we got pounded by hail and some insane wrapping winds that reminded me a lot of my last drive near Scott City, KS back in April!  We got back S out of the circulation to I-70 where we were forced to refuel.  After the fill up, radar showed the cell had gone back into a weakening stage so we let our appetites guide us back to Limon where we eventually called it a day.  Not too shabby!  I do have some video of both meso’s near Genoa that I will review later and post if they are spectacular or something…

Chase Stats:

Mileage – 292 miles

Total 2010 Mileage – 10,260 (I eclipsed the 10k mark!)

Tornadoes – 1 (It wasn’t glorious or very long lived, but I’ll chalk it up anyway)

Total 2010 Tornadoes – 14

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