May 20, 2004 Colorado supercell Chase

I left Iowa (after a total bust in southern Iowa) on the morning of the 20th and headed west to Colorado for a limited storm threat over that area. I met Tony Laubach (KC0ONL) when I passed him on I-80 and we talked via ham across Nebraska. We went to Last Chance, CO where we met up with Amos Magliocco and the WeatherVine group. The storm developed in the Denver area and moved northeast from there as we moved north and west to intecept the isolated supercell.

Pictures as we moved after the storm:

The storm continued to improve in organization and eventually developed a high based but rotating wallcloud:

There does appear to be a brief torndo under the wallcloud as I reviewed the video to find a brief condensation funnel that was below the wallcloud at the same time as a ground level power flash. Not exactly textbook but meets the definition certainly.

I also made a time lapse video of the wallcloud part of the storm which shows these things time lapsed (25X).

CLICK HERE for Windows Media format (6MB)
CLICK HERE for REAL format (3MB)

Kenneth