Talk about a chaotic start to the day! I lost, cancelled and then found my Visa, a process which cost me around 2 hours. Bwah! So I was not in the best mood at the start of the day but after fun and games in Limon, Jen and I were westbound on I-70 towards Denver. Today was really just a landspout type day playing storms in the DVCZ (Denver Vorticity Convergence Zone) as they rolled off the mountains. The first storm we intercepted was near Byers. It was just slowly beginning to ramp up as I watched it grow from a light rain shower into a mature storm.

You can see how the storm had some inflow growing aloft. It was also beginning to really turn green in portions so hail stones were growing quickly.

I had to reposition east as the storm took a strange jog towards me. At the time I thought it was just building in an odd fashion but it was actually being pushed by a nearby outflow boundary that seemed to surge into area out of nowhere. The boundary actually came from another MCS about 100 miles away that just suddenly collapsed and blew itself out. At this point in time the storm here is producing 1-2" hail.

Well after bouncing around with the storm for a while it eventually became a mess as other storms popped up and merged with it. What I was not prepared for was all the flash flooding! See in Southern Ontario when we get 30mm of rain, even 60 or 70 mm of rain in under an hour there is rarely major flooding in rural areas. The same amount of rain near Strasburg seemed to turn some roads into rivers.

I'm not sure if leaning out of the window and shooting video on your phone as you're driven through a flooded roadway is a good idea. You can never be absolutely sure how deep the water on a roadway is even if there is a flood gauge. Why? Because you had no way of knowing if the road has been undermined since you can't see it!

These two did make it safely to the other side and it was great video but I still shake my head.

Another video caption of a car driving through a flooded road.

Here's another example of less substantial flooding. You can see the road is still higher than the flood water so it's probably a safe bet you can make it across. But still, remember it's flowing water that's not standing still.