WCBI/MSU Storm Chase Day 8 Recap

COLUMBUS, Mississippi (WCBI) – Driving over 750 miles, we witnessed more storms on Monday…this time in northeastern Colorado!

Initially high based storms developed in the vicinity of the Denver airport around 3 PM MDT. Eventually, they strengthened and “detached” from the mountains and became severe as they moved east-northeast.

Mid-level rotation quickly increased, and we observed some lowering of the cloud bases over time. In the above image, there was rising motion but limited to no rotation from our vantage point. At the same time, the storm was producing severe hail (to the right of the feature in this image).

As the rear flank downdraft “surged” in on the south side of the circulation, we observed two gustnadoes with the storm. They lasted approximately 30 seconds and dissipated.

This was probably the “best” the storm looked from our view throughout the thunderstorm’s life cycle. There was a clearly rotating wall cloud with an occasional funnel, but cloud bases were still relatively high. The storm went on to produce baseball to softball hail near Yuma, CO, along with hurricane force wind gusts.