Colorado Supercells: June 19, 2018
It took a while, but one of the best storm chases of the year took place in eastern Colorado on June 19th. The early part of this season was very slow in terms of storm chasing prospects, but things really started to heat up in June.
This storm chase featured two intense supercells and finally broke my tornado drought, as I briefly witnessed a tornado from the initial supercell, from a distance.
As I closed in on the first supercell, it continued to show a low, rotating wall cloud, but there was no second tornado in the end. Nonetheless, I was able to watch the storm evolve at close range near Leader, CO with very few people, or chasers for that matter, nearby. It was a peaceful experience, despite having this ominous storm passing by over open fields.
The second supercell turned into a high-precipitation (HP) monstrosity. It was tornado-warned for a time, but any tornado would have been rain-wrapped. Regardless, it was an intense storm, producing severe outflow winds. I stayed ahead of this storm and watched it pass by Limon along I-70.
Here is a low resolution image of the tornado I mentioned earlier. This has been my fifth full year chasing and June 19th is by far the latest I have gone in a year before I witnessed my first tornado. In the other four years, I saw my first tornado before the end of April.
Toward the end of the storm chase, I captured this panoramic image, which shows the HP supercell on the left, along with mammatus on the right:
