'Nado Chaser

June 10,2010...

2010-06-10T21:01:00.002-06:00

Thursday, again on the way home from work, I'm driving eastbound on I-70 and notice to my right a gorgeous supercell coming out of Douglas county, I stopped at Airpark exit, and start putting my antenna and light on the roof of the wagon and my SKYWARN emblems ready to go off after this mofo if it lights up.

Sure enough, this cell drops a textbook wall cloud and the chatter on the scanner, they all say it's got to have a tornado in it. All of a sudden all these chasers pull up, including this fabulous SUV with STORM on it and radar and a weather station on the roof. I get back on eastbound I-70 and go after it, trying to get a bit ahead of it. Well, the wall cloud starts falling apart so I get off in Byers thinking I'll stop at the store for some groceries, I look up and it's looking better, so I don't even get out of the car, I sit there with the phone ready to call NWS cause it's not really organized...but it's rotating, slowly, but rotating, then it's gone. So I opt to take off again eastbound towards Deer Trail, CO and here comes the hail, big hail, I know there's an exit between me and Deer Trail, so I go for it figuring I'll wait out the hail under the interstate, well everyone else had thought the same thing, so I barrel over the the abandoned dog track and drive right up under the entry way, another couple, scared...from KS joins me. The storm is moving northeast the hail is just now crossing the highway, I tell the couple to go, that the interstate should drop south from here and away from this storm, I head for Hwy 40 to Deer Trail, again a frightened driver stops me and asks, again going to KS, I tell her the same thing and to keep her AM station tuned to 850 cause they'll sound warnings.

I get to Deer Trail and follow this ROTATING most gorgeous structured cell that I've seen in years, and I have no camera, it let down two tornadoes, and no camera, but luckily the amazing chaser Verne Carlson did.

Wonderful amazing pictures. He's da bomb!

June 5, 2010

2010-06-05T23:29:00.002-06:00

So it's late again. Sunday around 6pm and the NOAA radio goes off about a storm moving through Elbert county. So I grab my bag, dog, and camera and tell my hubby that I'm driving to the top of the road to see things better.

I got up there and this beautiful supercell was just sitting there east of me waiting to have it's picture taken. Again all the storms were firing up north, but I decided I'd follow this one for a while to see if it would produce anything.

I ended going east on Hwy 36 out of Byers. I drove and drove, and from the north storms were moving backwards....northwest to southeast rather then the typical southwest to northeast, (personally, I think that we get hellacious storms when they come in backwards) and ended up in Lindon, CO, didn't see a tornado, but got I think a funnel in a wall cloud and some nice pics of the farmland of eastern Colorado. I call this album...I'm sitting at Woodlin School and the NOAA radio just came out with a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for Woodlin School with baseball sized hail, so I should get the hell out of here!

Enjoy!

May 30, 2010...

2010-05-31T11:19:00.002-06:00

Some days you're just home, all the storms are firing late and they're all up in Wyoming, so you stay home and take pictures of clouds. I've learned to love all sorts of clouds, and I had got my new camera, cheap, on ebay, and I hate it, I have to get a better camera, it doesn't focus well on zooms and it's slow, but I shoot tons of pics just to get a few that work.

I really like these ones. These are the only ones that turned out. I shot them from my front deck and my back deck.

No...this picture isn't a cloud, it is my storm chasing English Cocker, Obi, who's happy to go through anything as long it's with one of his people.

These pictures were taken on May 30, 2010, oh maybe between 6pm and 8pm, don't really recall, but I'm glad at how they turned out. Enjoy the clouds.

April 21, 2010

2010-04-21T21:07:00.002-06:00

Rarely in Colorado does one have a very big hail storm in April, at rush hour, on the way home.

Between Bennett and Strasburg (my own personal hail hell), on the Interstate, making a bloody mess of everything, no where to go, no where to hide which is usually the case on the prairie.

So I just sat there, talking to NWS, taking pictures with my cell phone, a Samsung Rogue, promising them that if I ever got home I'd upload the pictures to Picasa and send them the link as part of my weather report.

Did drive to the Ace Hardware in Bennett to get under their lumber lean to, there were cars already there and in the midst of this storm at six when they closed a worker came out in the bloody hail just to tell us all to leave because they were closing. We all left, I won't say how many of us gave him the finger on the way out. I only got a few pics, but you'll get the drift.

The day that got me taking pictures after all these years...

2010-04-15T22:33:00.001-06:00

After years of chasing, one day in August of 2004, I heard a tone go off for my area, I went out on the deck to look and at the same time the phone rang, my husband got it and it was the National Weather Service calling to see if I could see anything. As my husband ran to let the horses go, and the geese, he then ran back to the house and got the dogs and cats and went in the basement. I however, with the phone cradled on my left shoulder telling the NWS what I was seeing and the closest to my exact location, I had my camera (I had screamed at hubby to go get it) and started taking photos.

All I remember of that day was the sound coming towards "MY" house, telling NWS that after YEARS of chasing them, a tornado was coming to me, and that out of the side of my eye I could see things that looked like birds plopping from the sky. That turned out to be a few "softball sized" hail that thankfully didn't fall but up the road, and there weren't but a few.

So here are the pictures of the the tornado that came to my house...enjoy...I sure did.