CHASING DAYS // Cope CO, May 28, 2018
May 28th, 2018 / Cope, Colorado
Another great day in the Heaven : Tornado Alley!
Our day started in Colby where we spent the night, after breakfast I checked models and I decided to head Burlington CO because that could be a good spot to start the chase-day!
We arrived in Burlington CO by lunch time, without haste, I had seen that storms would start in the middle/late afternoon, so there was no hurry.
We stop at Love's where we meet with our friend Andrea Griffa who was on the spot along with Gino De Grandis and Andrea Meschi (they were one of the cars of Tim Marshall's group) and waiting for the first thunderstorms to start talking about the synoptic situation and meteorological models.
Everyone was there, the most important and well-known stormchasers were there, from Daniel Shaw to Roger Hill, from Tim Marshall to Rayan McGinnis, they were all there, so we understood that the choice of Burlington CO could be the right one, if we all had had the same thought there was a reason.
It is just 05:00 pm and we immediately see from the radar that two small cells were developing (from our position looking north we could only see the anvils) one in the area of Cope CO and a more eastern one almost close to the KS/CO border towards St. Francis.
We decide to take us to a place of better view, so we started driving to Idalia CO, but on the way we entered an area not covered by internet connection, our radar didn't load, we could see only the sat map with the various warnings lines, when at a certain point the cell now above St. Francis enters Tornado Warning, so foot on the accelerator, we aim in that direction.
While we were on the road, however, this cell emerges from all kinds of warnings while the one on Cope enters into a double tornado warning, so we make a U-turn and carry ourselves to throttle towards Cope, but the miles to do are many, and we could seriously arrive late!
While we were on the road we see those that look like two tornadoes on the ground, but they were too far away to be credible, we will only find out afterwards that in reality they were two landspouts that remained on the ground for about ten minutes and we lost them!
But the cell was still in a tornado wanring, so we carry ourselves close to the hypothetical area of the mesocyclone when we see the clear outline of a tornado among the precipitating curtain, it wasn't very contrasted because of the rain but we got to photograph it for several minutes before it disappeared in the rain curtain!
Immediately afterwards another cone comes out of the wall cloud, also enveloped by rainfall; unfortunately, without a clear vision of speed radiating with the Doppler radar that was offline we will never know if it was a tornado or new landspout!
The two cells are now aligned in a small squall line that moves north-east with its shelf cloud, so we move and continue to keep up with the storm system until we get back to Colby KS where we will let ourselves be overcome by being swallowed by the rains.
This VR video shows some of the chasing moments when we finally arrive at the city (semi abandoned) of Cope CO!
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