June 7, 2001, Woodrow, Colorado

Twin F0's Tornados

What a great day in the high plains. In the morning as I put together my forecast the RUC had an area between Burlington and Holyoke, Colorado progged to have the strongest southeast surface winds. The 500 mb winds were pretty weak but the SPC had a slight risk in the area with a 60 Deg. dewpoint. I decided to head to Last Chance, Colorado and hang out on Highway #71 at the Dairy King. I figured, it's June, there's plenty of upslope moisture and with the "Denver Cyclone" something ought to fire up later in the day.

I left the house in Lakewood about 11:30 am after viewing the latest radar and satellite images. When I got to Byers, Colorado storms were already going severe to my south around Colorado Springs. In my excitement I momentarily change my plans and continued toward Limon east bound on I70.

After some thought I changed back to my original plan. I decided if I charged south I would be getting to the storms coming out of Douglas County pretty late. I would be approaching from the North and would have to go through the core of the storm to get to the updraft. Also my ham radio appeared to being acting up because I could not tune in any NWS frequencies. Without NWS I would be counting on the cell phone and time consuming download from the internet for information. At Deer trail I got off I70 and proceeded on the dirt road heading to Last Chance.

On the way to Last Chance two things happened. First I made a call to a party I heard on the ham radio and found out that a cable had been cut shutting down all NWS broadcast, so the radio was working after all. Second I observed that the anvil blow off from the Douglas County storm was casting a big shadow over the Last Chance area so I had to get north for sunshine and heating. As I drove toward Brush I noticed some towering cumulus to my northeast trying to get organized. At 9 mile junction (9 miles south of Brush), I turned and drove straight toward Akron. The pictures above show the developing wall cloud and inflow that was feeding this developing meso.

From this location and I drove south and east zig zagging across a great road network in the area. I called in to Goodland NWS at one point and reported a slow but persistently rotating wall cloud. Finally east/southeast of Woodrow I encountered some other chasers. The College of DuPage was there I believe. The pictures above show their van and the updraft of the meso. Also shown is the wall cloud under the meso.

After several minutes at this location I drove east a few miles to a newly developing wall cloud. While I was driving I observed a quick spin up and pulled over to video. In all I saw 5 F0 tornado's spin up and dissipate. The first picture above shows the first tornado dying (right hand dust plume) while the second spin up gets going. The second picture shows the second and a third tornado's vigorously spinning. These images were taken from the video I sent to TWC. Each of these F0's were coming from directly below the rapidly moving and rotating wall cloud. The direction of movement of the wall cloud was southwest. Third picture shows a fourth single funnel and the fourth picture shows the last funnel that I observed (upper right corner of the picture). The last picture shows the dying wall cloud. The time on this event 6:05 PM MDT and lasted about 5 minutes in duration.