Hello from Colby, Kansas!

We started the day in Burlington, CO and essentially hung out there until late afternoon. We had a bit of a conundrum... chase up near the low in northeast Colorado, into Wyoming and the Nebraska Panhandle, or gamble on storms firing further south into western Kansas. We basically placed ourselves in the middle until the weather forced us to make a decision. A storm went up west of Wray, CO so we headed north out of Burlington to meet up with it.

As we rolled through the hills of northeast Colorado, the storm began to rotate and form an impressive wall cloud and likely a funnel cloud. We continued north on the 385 to keep up with it toward Holyoke then let it cross the road in front of us. The storm was rotating still and had very large hail in it. Road networks were sparse so we had to let it cross the road and follow in behind it.

We slowly progressed east along the 6 toward Lamar following in behind the storm. We had to play tag with the core as there was no way we could punch through it without getting our vehicle destroyed. Up ahead in the core, golf ball and tennis ball size hail was falling. Eventually the core and the area of rotation passed north of highway 6, we continued east to watch. It was very hard to note any features in the core because of the hail and rain but a few suspect areas were showing up every now and again. From the other side of the storm and in the notch, people reported a tornado. We watched the storm head north then it began to weaken. Some people further away from the storm had incredible view of the structure but we just couldn't get there in time because we had to wait for the core.

We decided to call it a chase and head for Colby, KS for the night to position for tomorrow. On the way, as the storms moved off to the north, we got a beautiful structure and lightning display so we stopped to do some photography.

Tomorrow we'll likely head to Salina, KS then assess from there where to go. After that, we're going to proceed home to end off the chase trip.