One Tornado, Two Tornado, Green Tornado, Blue Tornado...

June 10, 2010 started just as any other day on Vortex2 (have I used that phrase before here?). The masses woke up to a really poor hotel breakfast (yours truly picked up a Nutra Grain bar from a local gas station and was rather dissatisfied) and were rushed about to a luxurious parking lot for lunch, a good long while of waiting, and some Dairy Queen. Eventually, the PIs (otherwise known as the almighty People Incharge) and the FC (they spend time in an ugly looking truck and nowcast things) picked a target storm, and then another target storm, and maybe another target storm (there are so many travel and storm targets throughout the day that it is very easy to lose track). Copious amounts of driving across the northeast corner of the grand ol’ Colorado ensued and the Vortex2 armada subsequently settled near a quaint little town called Last Chance. (Hopefully this really wasn’t our last chance! That would be sad.)

Anywho, shortly after we parked at a certain spot on a certain road (there are so many certain spots and certain roads throughout the day that it is very easy to lose track), we saw it; we saw some strange fluid (probably coming from the radiator) leaking from the right front of the car. Really, I’m kidding. The radiator did appear to be leaking fluid, but our attention was detracted from any automobile malfunction by THE TORNADO!!!


How awesome is that? This is a picture I’ve been waiting the whole trip for! Yeah!

And then… then there was another TORNADO!!! (Random trivia: June 10, 2010 was a Thursday, which was named in English because it was considered sacred to the god Thor. Thor, as you may or may not know, was the Norse god of thunder. How about that?)


Can you see it? Unlike it’s earlier counterpart, this TORNADO was rain wrapped. For the Travis Lutzes of the world, a rain wrapped tornado is like a burrito, with a rain curtain tortilla shell and a soft, squishy tornado center (perhaps contrary to popular belief, tornadoes don’t actually coexist well with rain. While it is believed that the cold air generated by precipitation is necessary for the formation of many tornadoes, tornadoes are essentially areas of violently rotating, upward moving air. Rain and other precipitation cools the surrounding air, causing downward motion. As you may have already deduced, downward motion isn’t too conducive to upward motion, and so tornadoes in the immediate vicinity of rain don‘t usually fair too well… In any event, the rain wrapped tornado we saw did not last very long).

Sadly, both of these tornadoes occurred in the middle of what we like to call a road hole, and since Vortex2 vehicles have a great history of getting stuck in the mud when they so much as pull off the road and onto a wet grassy shoulder, the CSWR Pod People were unable to deploy any pods in the tornado’s path. Also sadly, the storm shortly thereafter turned into little more than another RCC (Really Cool Cloud)… very nice to look at, but not much of a tornado threat. Oh well, there are still a few days left, right?


Following the TORNADOes and subsequent RCC, on the way back to our sleeping establishment for the evening, we were treated by mother nature to a spectacular lightning show, complete with a couple very high based little funnel clouds:


Can you see those?

On June 11, 2010 (a Friday, named after and sacred to the Norse goddess Freya), we saw some more TORNADOes, but they were pretty weak and short lived. I was sitting in the back seat of Probe13 when those happened. No pictures ensued. I did, however, manage to catch this shot of a small herd of the ellusive Imaxis filmcrewia and their mobile dwelling at a Colorado watering hole. (Props to Mike (who is not looking at the camera), Darren (who is not looking at the camera), Jack (who is behind a camera and not looking at the camera), and Greg (who is actually looking in the general direction of the camera).)