On May 21, Alethea Kontis and I met up with chaser friends in Limon, Colorado, including Jason Persoff, Bill Hark and Jack Beven. This is Jason’s backyard, and he was optimistic that we’d get some “Colorado magic” while sharing his knowledge of the ways of the DCVZ. That’s the Denver Convergence Voriticity Zone that enhances the potential for severe weather in eastern Colorado.
Promising convection northwest of Limon yielded a distant landspout tornado. The storm became severe-warned, and we were off, heading north and then chasing this beast east. Or, at times, being chased.
Southeast of Last Chance we watched the beautiful storm. (Multi-image panorama)
We spent a lot of the day southeast of the aptly named Last Chance, on beautiful, remote farm roads. I think it was Jason who said he didn’t expect to see many chasers out here.
Friends, we saw hundreds of chasers. This is the new way, unfortunately. I know we’re chasers, too. I just wish there weren’t so many of us.
Crowds not only complicate tornado targeting and egress — they make it difficult to escape a hail core when it’s moving over a dirt road with no outlets.
We got into the fringe of this beast’s core and mostly suffered small but unnervingly loud hail as I cursed. A lot. (Edited out of the video.) I was not in the mood to have my car destroyed again, and fortunately, we were able to turn south and get out of the way. Other chasers were not so lucky and experienced extreme damage to windows and car bodies.
Interesting lowerings suggested rotation.
Meanwhile, the storm was rotating and became tornado-warned. We were with it the whole time, but with the hail and road challenges, we didn’t see a tornado. “Brief” tornadoes were reported. Eh, it wasn’t worth losing windows!
Maybe we didn’t have all the Colorado magic this day, but it was a fun and exciting chase and especially enjoyable with friends.
Click on any photo to see a larger image and start a slide show.
And here’s our update the next day when we talked about the chase.