Date: May 23, 2015
Time: 1:00 - 6:00 PM MDT
Place: La Junta, Lamar, Holly, CO
Distance: 733 mi (492 positioning, 206 chasing, 35 to hotel)
Camera: T3i, GoPro3 Silver & Black
Warnings: SVR
Rating: S3

The Chase

11:00 AM: Last night we drove up from ABQ to the Hampton Inn in Lone Tree, CO. Our plan today was to hit northeast Colorado again as another Saturday four-corners trough digs in. But after looking at obs this morning, I'm worried about moisture and CAPE getting that far north especially with all the low early clouds. Leaving now and heading south towards La Junta, though my plan is not solid yet.

11:10 AM: I'm also torn on heading east out of Castle Rock to catch anything coming off the Palmer Divide. There's good enough upslope and upper level flow that something could happen there too.

11:55 AM: Decided to continue south and we are now in Colo Springs for a quick lunch at Chic-fil-a. Thundershowers are already rolling off the front range and we were pelted with pea-sized hail as we walked inside.

12:31 PM: Just finished lunch and trying to fight through to the east side of Colorado Springs seems like it's taking forever. A new Mesoscale Discussion just came out for eastern CO, but it sounds kinda pessimistic about tornado chances. Current plan is to fly east on Hwy 94 then south on 71 to meet some new discrete storms moving towards La Junta.

12:55 PM: Well well, despite the last MCD, a Tornado Watch just went up for all of eastern Colorado.

1:37 PM: Heading south out of Pumpkin Center now. Cell signal out here is terrible, but that was expected. Finally got a radar update from a tower near the 94/71 junction. Whaddaya know, a tornado warning for the storm moving into La Junta! It's going to beat us there though. Also I am running dangerously low on gas.

2:08 PM: Phew, finally found a gas station in Ordway. Lots of junk convection has gone up in the last half hour, but there might be a new tail-end storm worth watching that is also heading into La Junta. The original TOR-warned storm is looking messy.

3:09 PM: Punched through the tail end of the growing line of storms. We are now several miles east of Las Animas on Hwy 50. Have a nice view looking NE, finally getting some steady timelapse shots beside a creepy old grain tower.

3:21 PM: Still lapsing by this grain tower. A mail lady just drove past and asked about the storms. She said she moved out to Colorado to "get away from this s*#t!"

3:34 PM: New convection is continuing to grow to our southwest. I think this whole thing is gonna turn into one big line. We reposition just a bit - now sittin on the dirt roads just north of the John Martin Reservoir.

3:48 PM: Got some neat quadcopter shots as the storms surge towards us, but of course I forgot to hit record.

4:12 PM: Rolled east to the Hwy 50/196 junction to stay ahead of the storms. Everything is really congealing now, but we have a nice little kink in the line just to our west with some interesting cloud features. Overall a gorgeous shelf structure.

4:20 PM: We got what I'd categorize as a broadly rotating wall cloud at the north end of the kink in the line. South of that is an arcing gust front with lots of little areas of rotation. Best structure of the day!

4:26 PM: Playing right up against the edge of the precip, we let the gust front blow over and started getting the first few drops of rain before blasting east again to stay ahead of everything.

4:46 PM: Letting the line catch up to us again from the north side of Lamar. No obvious kinks in the line this time, but still neat little areas of small-scale rotation.

5:10 PM: Well this is unexpected. While heading east again to stay out front of the line we met an unusual roadblock. A semi must've cut a turn into a farm too wide and now its stuck - completely blocking the two lane road. Oh well guess I'll time lapse from here.

5:34 PM: The semi was pulled free by some other chasers before the line caught back up to us. Continuing on to Holly, CO.

6:00 PM: We are just south of Holly now, and it seems that both we and the line of storms are losing steam. A large bowing segment has moved well off to our north and east, the the southwest trailing end seems to be stalling and weakening. I'm gonna set up for a little while and see if anything gets more discrete, but we might be done for the day.

6:22 PM: Still south of Holly - getting some slider and copter shots (pressed record this time) as the line continues to peter out.

6:56 PM: Well, seems time to call it a chase. Can't complain, got lots of hours of storms today even if they lined out a little too fast. Heading into Lamar for the night - an easy post-chase drive.

8:15 PM: Walking in to a small Lamar bar called The Buzzards Roost for supper. I'm excited to try it but also a little nervous that a record-scratch-stopping-music might happen when we walk in :)

Recap, Filmmaking Notes, and Lessons Learned