May 22nd

May 22nd makes quite a show! For 3 consecutive years on this day, I have had a chance to witness a tornado this today being a Front Range landspout. Today, I woke up with the intention of just seeing cells and rain, but not in my right mind did I think I would see a landspout. It became clear to me as I watched the radar that two separate cells were occurring. One cell on I70 near DIA moving absolutely nowhere, and another set of cells moving towards 85. Now the ones moving towards highway 85 were not west to east movers but opposite... these cells were making there way closer to the mountains. This brought attention to a boundary that would sure setup while nowcasting. An outflow boundary formed from the storm moving towards the mountains collided with the westerly downsloping winds from the upper level High Pressure.
A Denver Cyclone was in place so Southeasterly winds fed the storms even with the slow movement of these storms.

Dann Cianca had just gotten off work around 5:40PM when I called him up and I asked him if he was gonna go out to spot for a bit. I'm glad I made the call cause he was one that got awesome footage of the landspout. As of than I just stood by my window 9 floors up in the hospital. I watched everything without having to pay a cent for gas and that's always nice.
As far as what I got pics were taken mostly from my cell phone because I thought I didn't have my card for my digital camera with me till I realized it was in my computer....lol....oh well....so I got everything going as well as my camera on my computer to capture the storm. The main gist of the captures that really defined the storm came from my cell phone.
Once I got my digital workin, I was able to get better quality pics from the end of the storm. All in all this storm was fun to watch given the Ridge of Death was supposed to terminate any chance of storm chase....well hospital chase in my case....
This was looking towards downtown Denver as the rain is dumping.

to see the documented landspout check out Dann Cianca's blog! http://blog.bigskyconvection.com/
till than looking forward to next May 22nd......