Yesterday, we started out the day in Fort Morgan, CO. When I woke up and checked the SPC, they had placed a 2% Tornado Threat ring over the area, so I was feeling better about the chase already.
I had a nice breakfast in the lobby. While I was there, I met two other storm chasers, Gabe and Steven. They had the latest SPC update, which showed a 5% Tornado Threat Ring, which was really good to see.
We caught up to the StormCruzzer folks and teamed up with them for most of the day.
On our drive the night before, I had noticed our driver’s headlight was out. We stopped at the Walmart to replace the bulb. This is the second time I’ve replaced a headlight bulb at the Fort Morgan, CO, Walmart on a storm chase (the first was in 2018). However, when I disassembled the headlight, I found a heavily damaged connector. The only thing I can figure is that after hitting the deer back in 2018, the retaining clip was damaged, and the bulb didn’t seat all the way. It arced when turned on, and partially melted the connector- it was spattered with arc flash debris, not melted from overheating. We went to O’ Reily’s Auto and bought the replacement part. JoAnna and I crimped the new one in place and it seems to work now.
The day was strange. We had a large cirrus shield that we could not escape. It covered most of the Great Plains, and was severely limiting our diurnal heating. A few weak storms fired and clustered, but nothing could take advantage of the screaming southwesterly winds. There was plenty of moisture, but the temperature barely reached 80 F, with the cloud cover. It just wouldn’t reach its potential.
We bounced around from Sterling, CO, and north towards the Nebraska border, catching a non-severe cell in the late afternoon.
At one point, there looked to be a precipitation core, so we bailed northeast, leaving the StormCruzzer folks (they have a hail-proof truck), but the storm ended up being below severe limits.
After that, we dropped back south to Fort Morgan and spent the night at the Rodeway Inn. We stayed in a different room from the previous night, but they sold the last room in the hotel while we waited in line (thankfully, we had made a reservation).
Our route for the day:
Thank you for reading my post.
The forecasts from the National Weather Service are from The NWS Homepage. The upper air soundings and mesoscale analysis plots are from the Storm Prediction Center website. The satellite data, model data, and forecasted soundings are from College of DuPage – SATRAD
High Plains Chasing 