Day 6: Though Dorothy Remains in Kansas...

Today was a classic example of how dynamic and fluid the atmosphere is. After an early weather brief, we were a bit torn between a cluster of storms forecasted to form near SW Iowa, and a bubbling of storms near NE Colorado. After a bit of debate, we decided to head to the Centennial State with, admittedly, low expectations. 

Dodging trucks for a sick picture

6 Love's, a whole mess of cows, and a delicious food truck later, we arrived at our target location and began to monitor the storm. Its intensity fluctuated from promising to discouraging...to promising again...but after a few hours, a beautiful, rotating supercell emerged from a pretty prime environment and exceeded all expectations for the day. The system ended up producing baseball-sized hail and a pretty impressive lightning show. 

Composite reflectivity of our supercell

Thankfully, the SRH and dewpoints around northeast Colorado improved throughout the day, helping to form the beautiful supercell we saw. While we didn't observe it, one farmer reported a brief tornado touch down on his land. What we did see was a well formed, rotating wall cloud, as well as a nice lightning show. 

storms at sunset 

Golden hour

Catching Lightning on camera is pretty hard