Pueblo, CO

Weather Forecast Office

14 July 2020 Las Animas Tornado

Overview (Work in Progress) :)

This page will be updated when additional information becomes available.

Summary of the storm that occurred in the early evening on July 14th, 2020:

A series of high-based storms traveling over the eastern plains came into contact with moist air flowing in from the east. The storms lowered and merged into a convective line, which allowed for the formation of some low-level rotation around 6:50 PM. By 6:59 PM, a tornado warning had been issued by NWS Pueblo. The tornado was reported by 3 storm spotters, and touched down in a mostly empty field west of Las Animas around 7:01 PM. Very few witnesses were in the area, but based on the spotter reports available, the tornado was on the ground for approximately 10 minutes and traveled less than 2 miles through the field before lifting and dissipating. Luckily, there was no reported damage, injuries or fatalities, so a storm survey was not necessary. Unfortunately, this means an EF rating was not determined.

Rotation below a storm near Ordway, Colorado. Courtesy of Rob Hoff on Twitter.

Tornado:

Tornado - Las Animas, CO
Bent County

Date	July 14, 2020
Time (Local)	7:00 pm - 7:30 pm
EF Rating	Unknown
Est. Peak Winds	90 mph (radar est.)
Path Length	Unknown
Max Width	Unknown
Injuries/Deaths	0/0
Summary: Tornado was first reported on the ground approximately 6 miles west or Las Animas, although the exact location of the tornado was not able to be confirmed exactly. Luckily, it touched down in a mostly empty field, and there was no reported damage to structures or vehicles. The tornado reportedly traveled through the field, fading in and out of view, before lifting 20 minutes or so later and dissipating.

Est. Track Map

Environment

Starting in the early morning hours, the area of interest was sandwiched between an upper-level trough along the Canadian border and a ridge centered over southwest Texas, visible at 300 mb. A weak disturbance, evident at 700 mb, had developed over central Colorado, which will allow for a source of positive vorticity advection and assist in providing atmospheric lift later in the day. A stationary front was also positioned in northern Colorado stretching into northern Nebraska. Throughout the day, the trough progressed slowly eastward and began moving the stationary front to the south and west as it transitioned to a cold front. The temperature gradient across the front was fairly weak, but the most important aspect of this front later becomes the shift in wind direction. This shift allowed for an influx of more moist air in addition to providing the necessary shear to develop more well-sustained updrafts in thunderstorms.

By midday, the front had begun slowly meandering its way southwards, while dry conditions prevailed over the eastern plains. Given the large disparities between temperatures and dew points, combined with impressive low to mid-level lapse rates in model soundings, the morning forecasters predicted the main threats for the day would be severe winds and large hail. Isolated, high-based thunderstorms were expected to develop in the afternoon and slowly merge into a convective line by evening before moving east into Kansas. As the front began to move southward, the winds changed to an easterly flow, bringing in more moist air and causing dew point temperatures to soar into the 60s, supplying much better moisture and increasing instability greatly (CAPE was forecasted to increase to around 2000 J/kg, more than enough for strong updrafts and large hail in this environment).

By about 6:30 pm, storm bases had lowered considerably due to the increase in near-surface moisture behind the passing cold front, which had now more or less stalled out again over the mountains. The bulk shear was over 40 knots at this point, and many of the more isolated cells had begun to merge into a more linear structure as the convection in the region became more outflow dominant and the system moved into an area with 3000+ surface CAPE. As the storms merged, their outflow and internal updrafts resulted in small pockets of rotation near the front of the line, and several tornado warnings had been issued in Otero, Bent, Kiowa, and Crowley counties. A tornado warning for this particular part of the storm was published at 6:59 pm. At approximately 7:01 pm, the tornado was reported to be on the ground, staying down for approximately 15-20 minutes and traveling several miles before dissipating.

SPC Upper-Air Maps:

July 14th, 2020 at 6:00AM MDT


300-hPa Analysis	500-hPa Analysis	700-hPa Analysis


850-hPa Analysis	Surface Analysis

July 14th, 2020 at 6:00PM MDT


300-hPa Analysis	500-hPa Analysis	700-hPa Analysis


850-hPa Analysis	Surface Analysis

Forecast Soundings:

March 29, 2019 18Z NAM, 3 hour forecast valid at 21Z, or 3 PM, near location of tornado.

SPC Mesoanalysis:


Surface Observations	Surface-based CAPE, CIN	LCL Heights


0-1 km Wind Shear	Effective Bulk Shear	Effective Storm Relative Helicity


Low-Level Lapse Rates	Mid-Level Lapse Rates	Low-Level Storm-Relative Winds

Media use of NWS Web News Stories is encouraged!
Please acknowledge the NWS as the source of any news information accessed from this site.


KPUX 00:54 UTC	KPUX 01:01 UTC	KPUX 01:08 UTC	KPUX 01:11 UTC


From Chad Casey on Twitter	From Emily Roehler and Jill Huserman on Twitter


Visible/IR Satellite	Visible Satellite