All I can say about Wednesday is WOW! WOW! WOW!
This is a brief summary of my chase. I will post my full report on my chase blog later today.
I left home at 11:15 a.m. and made it to my preliminary target of Ogallala, NE by 1:30. I spent the next one and a half hours gathering data at the City Library and watching and waiting and talking with Brett Adair, who was nowcasting for me. I started noticing convection beginning to develop along the DL in extreme eastern CO, so I decided to head further south, so I left Ogallala at 3:00 p.m. MST and dropped down Highway 61 through southwestern NE, passing through Grant, Imperial and Benkelman before I saw nice towers going up about 40 miles to my west, so I booked it west on Highway 34. I arrived in Haigler around 5:30 p.m. and drove a short distance south of Haigler on Highway 27 and watched from the top of a hill as a spectacular classic supercell moved out of Yuma County, CO into far western Dundy County, NE.
At 5:40 p.m.,the storm developed a nice wall cloud and dropped a brief, but pretty backlit rope tornado approximately ten miles north/northwest of Haigler around 6:35 p.m. MDT. The tornado lasted about a minute, and I took several pictures which I will post later. This supercell would later go on to produce several spectacular tornadoes near Grant, NE an hour later. I could have chased it, but my truck was running low on fuel and the Co-op in Haigler was closed, so I had to hustle back to Wray to fuel up. While I was filling up, new convection exploded along the DL. Brett informed me about the tornadic supercell moving out of Sherman County, KS, so I hauled ass back east on Highway 34. I punched through the developing line of supercells and caught a few golf balls and some blinding rain west of Haigler. As I got closer to Benkelman,significant anvil blowoff from the tornadic supercell was creating a fog that so constantly lit up by the lightning from the supercells that were literally surrounding me in all directions it was glowing. That made for a very surreal and eerie drive. I arrived in Benkelman and started down Highway 161 but quickly turned around as reports of the wedge started coming in. At Brett's suggestion I decided to move further east to the town of Max, NE, which is about eight miles east of Benkelman. I made a u turn about a mile east of Max and parked my truck. I took video of the lightning backlit multi-vortex tornado as it crossed into Nebraska, just missed Benkelman to the southeast and crossed U.S. 34 east of town at 8:35 p.m. MDT.
After the tornado had crossed the highway, I drove back towards Benkelman and drove through the damage path about two miles east of Benkelman, where parts of several trees and a powerpole were lying in the road.
I drove through Benkelman and observed some significant hail damage on the south and east side of town. While I was on the south edge of town, I observed two more brief tornadoes from a circulation passing about ten miles to the west of Benkelman. It was then that I made a decision to drive south to Bird City on Highway 161. What transpired next was a chaser's worst nightmare, a blunder that could have been deadly...
Tune in later today for the thrilling conclusion!
I caught the same stuff that most everyone else caught, from Silverton, Briscoe county, and on into Hedley and north. Beautiful storm structure, awesome tornadoes and full accounts, pics and videos willbe up on my web site this weekend at 
