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!