I was out the door from Clayton around 10:30. As I drove east through Boise City, OK and then north toward Campo and eventually Springfield, I noticed that storms had already gone up over the mountains in southern Colorado by the time I crossed the state line from the OK Panhandle into Colorado. This was expected, but storms were expected to intiate later in the eastern plains of CO, near the dryline, and when they did, those storms would be stronger and have a better chance of going severe. By the time I got to Campo, around 11:30, there was no sign of anything going on over the plains, just a few small fair-weather cumulus. In Campo I saw a sign for a place called "Picture Canyon," and given my interest in canyon photography which is almost a strong as my interest in storm chasing, and figuring that since the latest forecast discussion from the NWS in Pueblo expected the storms on the plains to initiate around 2 p.m., I figured I had time to go check out the canyon. It was maybe 8 or 9 miles west then 5 or 6 miles south from Campo on unpaved roads, and a pretty neat canyon. Of course with no water to carry in and no time for serious hiking without missing the storms, I was only able to look around and take pictures near the picnic area. It has a 4-mile loop trail and other trails, and it looked like a hike in the creek bed into one of the side canyons could have been interesting, so maybe sometime when I have more time and am properly prepared it would be an interesting day outing. But I got a few pictures, and in places the red bands in the sandstone were quite colorful.
But this was a chase day, so I started to head back toward Campo to resume the chase around 12:50. As soon as I was out of the canyon and had a clear view, I could see that there was now a towering cumulus cloud to the northwest, closer than the storms over the mountains, and a band of lesser but in places agitated cumulus northeast and southwest of the TCU. I got back to Campo as fast as I safely could on the gravel roads, then blasted north toward Springfield as the TCU blossomed into an incipient thunderstorm. I grabbed a sandwich and ice tea in Springfield, then headed west on US 160 to intercept the storm, which was north of Pritchett and NW of Springfield. This was around 2 p.m. And as the storm blossomed into an at-first high-based supercell and pulsed and gradually intensified, that is pretty much where it stayed for the next 3 hours. Once I got position on the storm, I did not need to move more than 5 miles or so for around 3 hours. The storm got its first SVR warning at 2:21 p.m., then got 3 more later, remaining SVR warned for most of the time until around 5 p.m. Here is a picture of the storm taken, I think, during the first of the four SVR warnings:
The precipitation drifted gradually east, and this was reflected in the SVR warnings that kept describing the storm as moving east at various speeds of 10-30 miles an hour. However, the storm was effectively stationary, because as the precipitation drifted east, updrafts kept backbuilding to the west, and precipitation from earlier updrafts weakened as it moved east. So the storm effectively remained around 8-13 miles north or NNW of Pritchett the whole time. This resulted in not only hail and high wind, but also very heavy preciptitation in a small area, leading to a flash flood warning. Per radar, it is likely that at least 5 inches of rain, and probably a lot of hail, occurred in one relatively small area. That area is very thinly populated, so there were no local storm reports, but I have no doubt that very heavy rain, large hail, and severe wind all occurred in close proximity in a relatively small area north of Pritchett and NW of Springfield. At times as the storm was pulsing up in intensity or the backbuilding led to new bursts of heavy precipitation, there would be brief bursts of cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning. But these did not last long, and most of the time there was frequent lightning and thunder up in the clouds, but not a lot of CG.
Shortly after 4 p.m., the storm pulsed up in intensity in response to a new backbuilding updraft, for the third or fourth time. This would lead to the peak intensity of the storm, and the most interesting part of the chase. A heavy precipitation core formed, a rainfoot developed on the south side of the core, and there was a spike in CG lightning:
This led to a new SVR warning, the third for this storm, at 4:15 p.m. Shortly therafter, new rain shafts formed to the south of the rainfoot, also moving south. But in a few minutes these dramatically intensified, and some began moving north. I mentioned on the video that rotating rain curtains could be forming, and later review of the video verified that. There was also a lowering back in the rain, which I also mentioned on the video. Reviewing the video, it does have the shape of a funnel, but given the amount of rain I was looking through, I could not tell decisively that it was. At 4:30, around the time this occurred, the NWS issued an update to the warning mentioning the possibilty of 2-inch hail, larger than what was initially warned for, and also adding a "tornado possible" tag. So, I think this storm came pretty close. Here are a few pictures from this peak phase of the storm:
New rain shafts form south of the rainfoot, and move to the south (right to left), the same as the rainfoot:
Shortly later, the new rainshafts have expanded in area and intensity, and some of them, likely the ones closest to me, are moving back north, as a rain-wrapped lowering forms:
A more zoomed version of the picture above, better showing the lowering back in the rain:
Here is a video clip showing the peak phase of the storm and the rotating rain curtains:
However, after a minute or two I lost any visual on the lowering. I decided to move a few miles west and try to get a better view through the rain, but by the time I did that, there was no longer any lowering, and the precipitation was clearly less intense than it had been. So whatever was going on in terms of rotating rain curtains and a possible funnel was very short lived. Now the storm seemed to be moving east more than it had been, so I decided to drop back east to Springfield and south a little to be out of its path. Along the way, I noticed that there was now a nice display of mammatus in the sky above:
The storm got one more SVR warning at 4:45, but by 5:20 it seemed pretty clear that the show was over, so I decided to head north to Lamar and get a room for the night, in anticipation of the next day's drive home to Pagosa Springs. Along the way I came to a wind farm, offering an opportunity to get a few pictures of the wind turbines with the storms in the background:
As I drove north, I could see that there were storms to my northwest. Checking radar, I confirmed a cluster of strong storms in the La Junta and Las Animas areas, moving generally east on a track toward Lamar or just north of there. No warnings in effect, though. As I drove toward Lamar, these storms gradually weakened. Arriving at the hotel in Lamar, I looked south and saw that the storm I had been chasing was now producing some nice sunlit mamamtus, so I got a couple pictures of that. Here is one of those:
I also noticed that a new SVR warned storm was near Campo, surging NE. Looked like a possible left split from some storms near the Raton Mesa, judging from its rapid northeast movement. I wondered if I had made a mistake calling the chase when I did, but after moving over Campo it quickly weakened. I got a room for the night, looked at the storms once more, and unloaded the car and did some unpacking. Radar showed the storms continuing to weaken, so I did not give them much more thought until I left the room for dinner a little before 7. But now the wind was really blasting in from the west, and a trash can went rolling across the parking lot and a large piece of plastic wrapping material (10 feet long, give or take a little) went flying and ended up wrapped around the rear wheel of my car. I got out my phone and took video, estimating the wind at 40-50 mph. It was easily that, as a 52 mph gust was recorded at the Lamar airport a few miles west of town an 6:45. Also got video of a lid flapping up and down on another trash can that could not go anywhere because it was against the building and of a CG flash about 2 miles away. Although the storm was unimpressive on radar, it produced this strong wind as it collapsed and gusted out over Lamar. An interesting end to a pretty interesting storm chase day.
Here is a video capture during this storm:
And here is a video clip showing the wind, stuff blowing around, and lightning:
Total chase mileage for the day: 295 miles.
Total chase trip mileage: 882 miles.