Date: June 23, 2018
Time: 4:00 - 9:00 PM MDT
Place: La Junta, Holly, CO
Distance: 585 mi (259 positioning, 256 chasing, 70 to hotel)
Camera: T3i, GoPros3 5 & 7, Karma, RX100ii
Warnings: None
Rating: S2

Pre-Chase

11:41 AM - 4:00 PM MDT: Put yourself in my position for a second. It's a lazy Saturday morning. Tomorrow looks like a nice chase day in SW Kansas and you already moved your Monday morning work to make room. But today there's a marginal risk in southeast Colorado. Who knows what can happen on the high plains in late June -- "Colorado Magic" and all that. Would you chase or would you wait till tomorrow?

Well for me, a day-before-the-day often has a cozy, low-pressure feel -- the anticipation for tomorrow makes today's storms a pre-icing on the cake. So with all that in mind, and since my gear was basically already packed, we made the last minute decision to head north on I25 for a little DBTD action. And it didn't hurt that the 1630z SPC outlook bumped SE CO to a slight risk! Leaving ABQ just before noon, it wasn't long before we reached the western fringes of tornado alley.

Meteorologically speaking, today is definitely not a classic chase. The primary feature driving potential is a small, midlevel trough drifting ESE from Wyoming -- definitely not a typical trough ejection but it will provide some venting anvil winds. Couple that with some surface moisture returning into SE COLO and the associated turning with height, plus likely initiation off the Palmer divide. Well who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Chase

4:00 - 5:20 PM MDT: A few small cells had bubbled up as we arrived in Trinidad by 4PM, but an infant supercell WSW of La Junta caught my attention. The 75 mile stretch of Hwy 350 between Trinidad and La Junta is one of the most delightfully desolate, lonely areas in all of chase country -- the distant hazy Rockies to the west and a seemingly infinite horizon to the east. Passing the ghost towns of Model, Tyrone, and Thatcher, the target storm's anvil and base emerged dead ahead.

At one point along this wasteland highway, the road cuts around a small butte and rises above the surrounding plain. This just so happened to provide the perfect vantage for our first timelapse spot of the day. All the high plains colors were out in full force: the olive greens around Timpas Creek, the yellow grasses, the deep blue sky, and the dark, isolated storm base several miles up the road. Our target cell was definitely rotating, but the high based indicated a definite struggle for moisture. And it didn't take long to see the base was shrinking and shriveling -- time for a hail core punch before the storm lost all ooomph.

5:20 - 7:00 MDT: The next hour and a half was spent in fruitless confusion as we dropped south out of La Junta and then lost all cell service in the mesas and canyons. But it didn't require radar to know our initial storm was done -- the base replaced by orphaned streaks of rain and small hail illuminated in the golden late afternoon sun.

Cutting east at Kim over to Springfield, we finally reacquired radar only to see that the last remaining activity was a gusting out complex to our north. But remember, this was the low stakes day-before-the-day. Can't be sad or frustrated right? RIGHT?? And so we gassed up and headed north towards Holly in hopes of a nice evening shelf.

7:00 - 8:25 PM MDT: Driving north towards Holly, the new outflow-dominate storm was soon in sight. But instead of an epic shelf cloud with dramatic rising scud, we instead got a featureless, black cloud bank. Nevertheless, pressing on towards the edge of the precip, we pulled off the highway for another timelapse just south of town. By this point, the deep orange sun was dropping underneath the cloud deck creating some amazing colors. In addition, a fresher outflow surge created a more interesting, turbulent structure. I lapsed and flew the Karma drone for half an hour as lightning bolts added their white-purple flashes to the reddening sunset.

8:25 PM MDT - 11:10 PM CDT: As the storms continued to the southeast, we picked Garden City as home base for the night. Heading east on Hwy 400, we only made it to the KS/CO border before it was obvious one last stop was required. The back side of the growing MCS was awash in sheet lightning and dramatic anvil crawlers. I got the camera out one last time as full-sky bolts illuminated noisy cows in the field next to us. Between that and a late-night stop at the Garden City BWW, It was a perfect end to an otherwise meager chase day.

Recap, Filmmaking Notes, and Lessons Learned