Uploaded April 2021 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
Several Landspouts and a #Tornado formed in Eastern #Colorado southwest of Kit Carson. See the full chase, and a little information on how to forecast for Landspouts, and how they form. But in Science Out There fashion. April 27 2021...I don't just do theory. I go get it.
There was a curious secondary region up in Colorado and Kansas where, what was essentially, a cold front might pool some moisture into an environment with winds that change significantly with height.
Discord? discord.gg/bNMVrjf
Patreon? patreon.com/scienceoutthere
Twitter? twitter.com/ScienceOutThere
Another sign was a region of high 3Cape.
CAPE or Convective Available Potential Energy is a measurement of the area between an environment's moist adiabat line as you travel up the atmosphere, and the temperature. With this measurement, forecasters and chasers can determine the amount of energy is available in an environment, and therefore it's potential to produce a robust convection, an updraft. One way to measure CAPE is from the mixed layer, rather than the surface.
Once you understand CAPE, 3CAPE then, is just the CAPE calculated for the Mixed layer instead of the surface , for ground level up to 3km in altitude.
Large areas of 3CAPE or in other words 3CAPE values of say, 100 or more can mean a lot of extra vertical stretching below a storm. Broad areas of rotation below an updraft can sometimes tighten and form a Land Spout tornado.
Land spouts are Tornadoes, but not associated with a parent mesocyclone, a rotating storm. #Landspouts are often seen well away from their parent updraft, or even connected to the side of an updraft. A typical land spout is weak and will only produce EF1 damage, and 100 mph winds or less if they happen to come into contact with structures.
Now I could have been cheap, ambiguous, and also sorta wrong, by saying a land spout is like a water spout but over land. Water spouts are any kind of tornado over water, even the more violent kind that comes from a rotating storm. But most waterspouts do form just like a landspout. By way of enhanced Vertical stretching and some sort of parent updraft. So a landspout can share characteristics and often look just like their cousin, the typical water spout.
But hey we're talking about Colorado here so we've got to spin the wacky knob to 11! Mesocyclonic Tornaodo, Landspout? How about a little bit of each all at the same time.
This isn't even the first time Colorado has done this. In 2018, the same sort of thing happened in Cope, CO. One tornado is connected to a parent mesocycle while a landspout also formed, attached to a parent updraft near by.
Thanks for watching and I hope you enjoyed this Colorado tornado and landspout chase. For more weather related content click one of the cards on the screen. Hit subscribe to see future weather, adventure, and astronomy content. Until the next one. I'll see you out there.
Photography info:
Sony A7S3, Tamron 28-200
Canon 6D, Sigma F1.4 Art 20mm
GoPro Hero7
Drone Footage: DJI Mini 2
00:00 Teaser footage
00:13 Secondary Tornado Target
00:22 How Landspouts are formed
03:20 Tornado and Landspout
04:46 Funny Lightning Shot
05:15 Chasers in the WILD
06:05 Close range Gustnado
06:50 Racing after Landspout
Several Landspouts and a #Tornado formed in Eastern #Colorado southwest of Kit Carson. See the full chase, and a little information on how to forecast for Landspouts, and how they form. But in Science Out There fashion. April 27 2021...I don't just do theory. I go get it.
There was a curious secondary region up in Colorado and Kansas where, what was essentially, a cold front might pool some moisture into an environment with winds that change significantly with height.
Discord? discord.gg/bNMVrjf
Patreon? patreon.com/scienceoutthere
Twitter? twitter.com/ScienceOutThere
Another sign was a region of high 3Cape.
CAPE or Convective Available Potential Energy is a measurement of the area between an environment's moist adiabat line as you travel up the atmosphere, and the temperature. With this measurement, forecasters and chasers can determine the amount of energy is available in an environment, and therefore it's potential to produce a robust convection, an updraft. One way to measure CAPE is from the mixed layer, rather than the surface.
Once you understand CAPE, 3CAPE then, is just the CAPE calculated for the Mixed layer instead of the surface , for ground level up to 3km in altitude.
Large areas of 3CAPE or in other words 3CAPE values of say, 100 or more can mean a lot of extra vertical stretching below a storm. Broad areas of rotation below an updraft can sometimes tighten and form a Land Spout tornado.
Land spouts are Tornadoes, but not associated with a parent mesocyclone, a rotating storm. #Landspouts are often seen well away from their parent updraft, or even connected to the side of an updraft. A typical land spout is weak and will only produce EF1 damage, and 100 mph winds or less if they happen to come into contact with structures.
Now I could have been cheap, ambiguous, and also sorta wrong, by saying a land spout is like a water spout but over land. Water spouts are any kind of tornado over water, even the more violent kind that comes from a rotating storm. But most waterspouts do form just like a landspout. By way of enhanced Vertical stretching and some sort of parent updraft. So a landspout can share characteristics and often look just like their cousin, the typical water spout.
But hey we're talking about Colorado here so we've got to spin the wacky knob to 11! Mesocyclonic Tornaodo, Landspout? How about a little bit of each all at the same time.
This isn't even the first time Colorado has done this. In 2018, the same sort of thing happened in Cope, CO. One tornado is connected to a parent mesocycle while a landspout also formed, attached to a parent updraft near by.
Thanks for watching and I hope you enjoyed this Colorado tornado and landspout chase. For more weather related content click one of the cards on the screen. Hit subscribe to see future weather, adventure, and astronomy content. Until the next one. I'll see you out there.
Photography info:
Sony A7S3, Tamron 28-200
Canon 6D, Sigma F1.4 Art 20mm
GoPro Hero7
Drone Footage: DJI Mini 2
00:00 Teaser footage
00:13 Secondary Tornado Target
00:22 How Landspouts are formed
03:20 Tornado and Landspout
04:46 Funny Lightning Shot
05:15 Chasers in the WILD
06:05 Close range Gustnado
06:50 Racing after Landspout
