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Tornado Warned Storm La Junta, CO 5/23/2015




 


Started out the day with another 5% tornado risk in Eastern Colorado.







 Skip and I before the chase - photo by Allan Detrich.


 








 
At this point we had a tornado warned storm.  I'll also share a photo of me in my helmet ready to go!






We didn't get a tornado but there was a lot of dramatic structure.  I'm not sure how that, above, is not a tornado.  The storm wasn't even severe warned at this time if I remember correctly.  It had all of us pretty baffled, but the structure looks identical to that of a large tornado.


Here are some of my favorite "behind the scenes" photos of Sean filming some sequences for his IMAX movie.









The storm was pretty shelfy and outflowy at this point, and as we drove east to stay ahead of it, there were some nice little spinups of gustnado.  (The gusty fingers of the shelf cloud and gust front can kick up swirls of dust, sometimes to gigantic proportions.)  These are not *NOT* tornadoes, but they are classified as "gustnadoes."  Even if you see a "funnel" type of shape above.




We had a great chase day and accomplished a lot!  We went to an awesome local spot in Garden City called "Time Out" for dinner and beers - the staff was incredibly friendly, and they were able to easily accommodate our vegan diet requests.  Super chill and a great way to end the day... especially with unexpected HUGE sides that only cost a dollar.  Sean was gearing up all his manly strength to eat this huge amount of food!  :)