Chase 10 June 17th 2011 Palmer Divide

It was noon. The Rockies were convective from early morning heating and cells were pushing of the Rockies through Denver. I was getting out of the hospital and was ready to leave for a chase once again. A nice rain shaft blanketed Denver as I was packing up the car. Today was going to be awesome because of the conditions and Palmer. I was able to find someone to go with me because I really do enjoy company while chasing. Paddy Fowler was getting off work just in time for some Palmer magic action. A frontal boundary was pushing off the Rockies so at first it was linear so I had time to wait for Paddy to show up. I was ancy, but patience is something I've learned. Paddy and I departed after the linear stuff converged further east creating the first severe thunderstorm just south of Byers. We drove through the core getting some awesome hail on I-70. Pushing forward there was another developing severe thunderstorm developing and moving northwards behind it. We sat around and watched this develop with a long inflow tail wrapping into the long meso. It was a beautiful view to be in between two cells. One to the north and one to the south parked just southwest of Agate, Colorado. Watching the convective towers beginning to form on the east in the direction of Limon, it was time to head in that direction to be there for the 3rd convective severe thunderstorm. We get to Limon parking just south of town and watch a beautiful meso outflow cell with a wall cloud rooted deep into the core. It was simply amazing. We could see yet another cell developing east of Colorado Springs moving NNE, so this would set us up for the 4th best severe thunderstorm with supercell structure for a brief time as we arrived. The mesocyclonic structure on this severe storm made this worth the whole day of excitement that we had just already experienced on the first 3 cells prior. With the knowledge of all the storms prior going outflow, we knew time was limited before this moster cell would go outflow. Soaking all the green sounding skies along with the base meso, it was great. We saw dust getting kicked up out front which signaled this thing was heading eastward. No hope of this thing restructuring as it folded over. Looking on radar we saw yet another couple of cells were making their way out of C Springs turning severe. So we bailed out and headed a little west. At this point we are waiting just outside of the town of Punkin Center. I just had a feeling we needed to wait this girl out, yea storms can be girls too lol. We noticed along convective line from roll clouds were becoming quite impressive as it would come into an area of greater moisture from the backside of the 4th passing cell. A beautiful long shelf parallel hwy 71 north and south moved with intimidation eastward. This was very impressive and gorgeous. We drove north on 71 punching yet another hail core finishing off with very photogenic sun crespecular rays piercing through the leftover cu towers. All in all, 5 well noted cells and with good timing to each of the severe storms, makes this a great chase experience with Paddy. Glad we were able to make up for the bust day :)