DEN Summer WX finally arrived

denverpilot

denverpilot

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DenverPilot
Little sporty here tonight.

Note the Tornado Warnings that popped up as an alert at the top of the screen as I hit the screen capture buttons. ;)

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The lightning show is cool. Watering the lawn too. :)
 
Fun time in my area too.

Flash, bang, then I'm in the tech version of the stone age for 15 minutes while the grid realigns. Not good when the income side of your biz relies on phones and computer.
 
Yeah. I hear ya there.

Facebook buddy shot this photo. Totally cool.

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Looks like I got out of Dodge, er Denver just in time today, Greg and I watched the beautiful snow-capped mountains and their accompanying clouds from an airport restaurant deck til about 2. Beautiful day; I think Colorado could grow on me pretty quick.
 
Pretty cool huh? He reports it was taken "straight up" over the US Air Force Academy North Entrance gate.
 
denverpilot said:
Little sporty here tonight.

Note the Tornado Warnings that popped up as an alert at the top of the screen as I hit the screen capture buttons. ;)

aeff8275-0c88-85a5.jpg


The lightning show is cool. Watering the lawn too. :)
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Hmmm.... looks like a cell over my house.
 
Theyre "stuck". The outflow boundaries keep creating new ones just sitting over the house. :)

23:00 and still going. Light hail, heavy wind, heavy rain.

 
Still sitting overhead. Looks to keep going and move northeast past midnight until it runs out of energy.

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denverpilot said:
Theyre "stuck". The outflow boundaries keep creating new ones just sitting over the house. :)

23:00 and still going. Light hail, heavy wind, heavy rain.

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As long as they're gone by tomorrow afternoon...
 
Forecast is for them to reappear in Northeastern Colorado (the usual line along I-76) tomorrow afternoon and some could even linger from tonight up near the CO/NE border until 0700 tonight.

Stalled warm front being fed by a Low southeast sucking moisture upslope from the Gulf.

Even more odd, the Warm front looks like it'll back off to the West on Saturday, swimming upstream until the next wave of cooler air pushes it East again sometime Sunday.

Not too "normal" to see stuff "back up" over the Rockies back over to the other side.
 
Wow. Tornado Warning for Lakewood until 00:15. The new cell is further North. Continuous lightning to our Northwest now.

Reminds me of Skywarn chasing many years ago, but rare to see the storms "trapped" up against the mountains like this. Chases into the dark were usually out past Prospect Valley or into Nebraska on I-76.

Need to go to bed for the flight tomorrow but I love watching this stuff. Amazing releases of energy.
 
Still going.

The cell to the northwest threw off another and merged over Chatfield Reservoir to our West. It is headed this way.

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Here's video of the almost continuous lightning. Note it's dead silent here at 00:25 when this was shot. It's now getting close enough to start hearing the continuous "bowling ball" sound just starting.

Another ten or twenty minutes and it'll be overhead. Wow.


No precip started here yet. Can feel cold outflow ahead of it. Very cold.
 
Precip just started. It's here. Light precip. Big drops. Going to get interesting. Dog is unhappy.

I think I heard it saying, "I'm coming for you, Ricky Bobby!" in a fake French accent. ;)

Here's a few minutes ago... Some great lightning. The shot is down the street to the West and through North.


And the current radar...

Another few minutes. NWS is saying its capable of 1.25" hail. We'll see if it drops it on us.

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The iPad is processing and uploading almost ten minutes of video of pea-sized continuous hail from my back porch. Holy cow. My lawn looks like we had a snowstorm and it's still coming down. My side driveway is a 1" deep river with hail floating in it slowly draining into my back yard.
 
Local news is reporting 400 cloud to ground lightning strikes in the last hour. Moving off much more quickly to the East now.
 
Okay, here's the peak of the storm here in my backyard about 25 minutes ago.

Only one of our local TV stations stayed live and covered it. I loved listening to the tired weather guys talk all excitedly about the new dual-polarization radar coming soon for droplet/hail size.

Someone made a snowman out of hail. And there was a two foot "drift" of hail balls in the Pinery area. Wow.

Mine's much less dramatic but still fun.

Okay bedtime. Nighty night. Gotta fly tomorrow.

 
It looks like it could explode or some deity is about to emerge.

If this wasn't an aviation forum I might guess that picture was a scan of someone's polyp gone wild.

denverpilot said:
Yeah. I hear ya there.

Facebook buddy shot this photo. Totally cool.

4b94241c-1673-22c5.jpg
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Heard from work this morning that they got golf ball sized hail yesterday and every car in the parking lot has damage including mine, the other pilot's and the passengers'. That doesn't bode well for any airplane that was parked outside at KAPA yesterday.
 
Everskyward said:
Heard from work this morning that they got golf ball sized hail yesterday and every car in the parking lot has damage including mine, the other pilot's and the passengers'. That doesn't bode well for any airplane that was parked outside at KAPA yesterday.
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That's EXACTLY why I was based at KFTG, instead of KAPA (where I lived under the pattern near Park Meadows). I could get a hangar at KFTG, and I wasn't going to leave the little Kitty outside. Well, I don't do that anywhere I live, but especially in CO.

That stuff looked nasty last night. Would have been a good show up at Red Rocks. :)
 
Anthony said:
That's EXACTLY why I was based at KFTG, instead of KAPA (where I lived under the pattern near Park Meadows). I could get a hangar at KFTG, and I wasn't going to leave the little Kitty outside. Well, I don't do that anywhere I live, but especially in CO.

That stuff looked nasty last night. Would have been a good show up at Red Rocks. :)
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Soooo... the sheet metal on my car looks like a golf ball but it actually fared better than other people's cars since there is no damage to the windows or the sunroof and the only plastic that is broken is on one of the mirrors. One woman's car had the sunroof busted out then it flooded. Someone else already got an estimate, for $15,000 worth of damage. One of the guys at work said that he heard 80 airplanes were damaged out at KAPA including a number of business jets. None of them were ours.

I also heard the B-17 which was at Signature got some damage too. :(
 
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Sorry to hear that Mari. That sounds pretty bad, especially for your friend, and some of the others. :(

There is no reason that 17 should have been sitting outside in that.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Looks like I got out of Dodge, er Denver just in time today, Greg and I watched the beautiful snow-capped mountains and their accompanying clouds from an airport restaurant deck til about 2. Beautiful day; I think Colorado could grow on me pretty quick.
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I think you had a few hours of spare wiggle room ... I noticed on flightaware that the only thing it showed for you was a small cell somewhat west of Alamosa. Yeah, not a bad view from the deck there :) and included Tanker 11 (P2V Neptune) taking off with apparently a full load.

Everskyward said:
Soooo... the sheet metal on my car looks like a golf ball but it actually fared better than other people's cars since there is no damage to the windows or the sunroof and the only plastic that is broken is on one of the mirrors.
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ouch ... sorry to hear that. White Jeep dodged the hail - worked from home Wednesday and we got nothing but wind and a little rain out west.
 
I just got a call from one of my partners... :sad:

The Six has significant hail damage to the stabilator, 2 broken windows on the pilot's side, and dimples on the wings. We're tied down on the TACair ramp.

I'll be contacting the insurance co today.

I'll post pics when I get out to the field (maybe this afternoon, how can a guy stay at work when his plane is in distress)
 
COFlyBoy said:
I just got a call from one of my partners... :sad:

The Six has significant hail damage to the stabilator, 2 broken windows on the pilot's side, and dimples on the wings. We're tied down on the TACair ramp.

I'll be contacting the insurance co today.

I'll post pics when I get out to the field (maybe this afternoon, how can a guy stay at work when his plane is in distress)
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Bummer:sad:
 
denverpilot said:
Little sporty here tonight.

Note the Tornado Warnings that popped up as an alert at the top of the screen as I hit the screen capture buttons. ;)

aeff8275-0c88-85a5.jpg


The lightning show is cool. Watering the lawn too. :)
Click to expand...

Slightly off topic, but what app are you running for these radar shots? And what platform?
 
platform looks like iPhone...
 
gkainz said:
ouch ... sorry to hear that. White Jeep dodged the hail - worked from home Wednesday and we got nothing but wind and a little rain out west.
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I thought about White Jeep but I figured you wouldn't have been at work late at night. I think many other cars dodged a bullet because they were at home in their garages instead of at work.
 
COFlyBoy said:
I just got a call from one of my partners... :sad:

The Six has significant hail damage to the stabilator, 2 broken windows on the pilot's side, and dimples on the wings. We're tied down on the TACair ramp.

I'll be contacting the insurance co today.

I'll post pics when I get out to the field (maybe this afternoon, how can a guy stay at work when his plane is in distress)
Click to expand...
That sux. :(
 
Sorry to hear about the airplane and car damage guys. Ouch. I hear there was tornado damage to houses out East also? Ouch.
 
Coworker had all the the windward windows in his house blown out and flooded his basement. Roof damage and siding looks like it was shotgunned
 
Ghery said:
More strength to the argument that I might need to get an iPad. Foreflight being the original reason.
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Foreflight also shows radar on the map display.

myradar is handy too. It seems that the source is different than Foreflight. Kind of nice to be able to look at two different processed radar pictures.
 
Met the insurance adjuster yesterday on the ramp.

It looks like my plane is probably totaled and definitely not airworthy.:sad:
 
COFlyBoy said:
Met the insurance adjuster yesterday on the ramp.

It looks like my plane is probably totaled and definitely not airworthy.:sad:
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Thats too bad. Was there any hangars available? If there was one available and you cared about your plane, I would have had it stored in a hangar ;)
 
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flyer said:
Thats too bad. Was there any hangars available? If there was and I would have the plane stored in a hangar.
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The number of airplanes at Centennial exceed the number of hangars. Hail isn't uncommon around here but it's pretty unpredictable where it's going to hit and this was a particularly destructive storm. Unless you hangar your airplane all the time, which is very expensive there, it would be hard to judge when you ought to get one for the day. That is if there are any available.
 
COFlyBoy said:
Met the insurance adjuster yesterday on the ramp.

It looks like my plane is probably totaled and definitely not airworthy.:sad:
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:( Any idea how big the hail that caused that level of damage was?
 
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