There’s not a whole lot to write about in this one, so I’ll keep it brief. I left this morning at 10:30 and went straight north up I-25 and was initially going to sit in Cheyenne and see how the synoptic’s were setting up but I never had time for that. Storms started firing off the Laramie Mountains before I ever got to Cheyenne. I continued north and passed through a marginal, elevated storm just north of Chugwater and continued on to Wheatland. I got just east of town and a beautiful shelf cloud was just coming off the mountains.
While messing with some of my camera’s settings, I accidentally fired one off with the completely wrong ISO but I looked at it again and I think it’s pretty cool looking!
My plan was to fill up in Wheatland and then get east to keep ahead of the line of storms and that plan was going great until I got past Grayrocks Reservoir where my nice paved road turned into an un-passable mud bog. And it was the only road that went east! Thwarted, I turned around and went back to Wheatland to finally get some lunch at the least and come up with a new plan. And my new plan ended up being to drive home! Hahaha! On the way back down I-25, some really nice mammatus clouds were right over Chugwater so I stopped and took a few pic’s.
After that it was a straight shot home. Pretty disappointing day. I suppose any chase that yields some decent photography isn’t bad and this chase did put me over 10k miles for the year so that’s kind of a landmark moment. I knew storms were going to be rainy and messy but I was hoping to at least get a few storms to be on their own before they jumped in the line but it was not to be. Oh well.
2011 Chase Statistics:
Mileage This Chase: 435
Total 2011 Mileage: 10,333
Tornadoes This Chase: 0
Total 2011 Tornadoes: 4