06/01/08 REPORTS: WY/NE/SD

[Bob Schafer]

I chased the storm that initiated in E WY, then tracked near Scottsbluff NE to Julesburg CO, then down into SW NE. I didn't include CO for the thread title because the storm was in CO for all of about 5 minutes.

I made it to the show kind of late, since I left Enid at 9:30CDT this morning. I was targeting NE CO, and I groaned when I reached GLD and fired up the laptop, only to see I was still more than two hours from a storm that initiated in WY. I had hoped to arrive at a storm sooner than 5:30PM after driving almost non-stop all day, but it was worth it when I finally arrived N of Lodgepole NE. I probably would've just bagged it in Burlington if I wasn't expecting to target right around here tomorrow.

This storm may just go down in the record books as having the most awesome structure I've ever witnessed.

There were actually two ground-hugging wall clouds when I "got there", and I was still a bit too far away to discern if I was seeing actual tubes, but it was still plenty interesting from afar. Based on a lack of tornado reports from there on SPC, there apparently were NOT tornadoes there. Oh well. Those features disappeared before I could get any closer, but I did quite a bit of videotaping of the storm for the next couple hours, and I know it's pretty cool stuff. No vidcaps here, and I haven't had a chance to post anything on YouTube yet, but here are some stills I (also) took:

 

[Jason Branz]

Chased the same storm as Bob, although it's amazing that we got there in time. Met up with Kevin Manross in SLN around 1 p.m., then blasted west to GLD, then north to the beastly-looking cell that was moving southeast through Morill county NE. The storm had a fantastic backsheared anvil and a nice, horseshoe-shaped updraft base as we got closer.

After getting close to it near Chappell, we went back southeast through Julesburg, then south to Venango NE, taking photos the whole way. Bob is right...the structure was fantastic, definitely the best I've seen on this chase trip. It tried to develop a wall cloud near Julesburg, but never produced any tornado. East of Venango, we encountered a strong inflow jet-type feature, then saw a tight dust whirl in a field about a mile away. The dust wasn't connected to the cloud base, so perhaps it was associated with the RFD.

Overall it was a great chase...a nice, photogenic supercell that wasn't moving too fast. We're in GLD today, looking at maybe playing the same area this afternoon.

 

[Charles Kuster]

We also chased the storm in the NE panhandle that moved southeast clipping extreme northeast CO and then dying out south of Grant, NE.

We started the day in Winfield, KS after chasing the storms in northeast OK on 5/31 and basically drove all day to reach northeast CO (we did take a break north of Wray, CO waiting for the cap to break in Colorado which did not happen). The storm had good structure as it approached Chappell and Julesburg. We saw some weak rotation in a possible wall cloud near Julesburg, but no tornado. The storm continued to move to the southeast and we moved toward Venango, Nebraska where we saw a couple gustnadoes. I don't think we experienced the largest hail this storm had to offer, but we did see .75"-1.00" hail near Brandon, Nebraska.

 

[Mike Umscheid]

I stationed myself southwest of Scottsbluff near the WY border awaiting the anemic Wyoming storm to finally get into better moisture. When it did, a bunch of other high-based garbage started forming immediately east of it. Soon this garbage became a severe storm oriented along an east-west line from south of Scottsbluff to north of Bridgeport. Eventually a supercell formed from all of that stuff northwest of Bridgeport. That was quite interesting to watch how that all unfolded both visually and on radar. I finally reached Bridgeport where I received 1" hail and met up with Matt Crowther, Greg Brenneman and the "Original Twister Sisters" at the Hwy 385/92 junction. The rotating wall cloud at that intersection was about the best non-undercut rotation we had seen from this storm. It was pretty much "structure mode" after that. I decided to head way south and west a bit to photograph the storm from afar. It was certainly beautiful from this perspective. I was quite happy with the structured Cb + colors at sunset. I uploaded 6 images to my blog

 

[Tony Laubach]

COMPLETE JUNE 1, 2008 STORM CHASE LOG HERE

Chased in a three-car caravan with Jon Van de Grift and myself in the van; Chris and Krista Yates; Kyle Kluge and Marta Nelson.

Jon met me at my place and we met Chris/Krista along I-76 and bounced back and forth between Stoneham and Sterling on CO-14 before pulling the trigger on the now southeast moving cell north of Sidney.

We arrived to quite the treat as we saw some of the best structure of 2008! Once we decided tornado chances were very low, we opted for the core and let it pass over us at the I-80/Hwy 138 junction. Saw quarters mostly with a few bigger stones. Called the chase in Julesburg, regrouped, and headed to Sterling for dinner at Country Kitchen.

MORE IMAGES HERE...

 

[Laura Duchesne]

We chased the Scottsbluff/Julesburg supercell as well. We took some back roads to get closer to the wall cloud but the road network was very poor, so we turned around. We were in the hail core, watching it accumulate. After that, the rear flank opened up and we were in between the inbound and outbound winds where a lot of dust was being whipped up into the storm - incredible! Afterwards, we saw a beautiful bell shaped supercell in the distance.

 

[Erik Perozo]

Chased the Julesburg Supercell as well. We were late getting to it but when we did we were in for a show. The storm had spectacular structure and we even witnessed an anticyclonic land spout on the back side of a cyclonic rotating meso. It was the weirdest thing I have witnessed. This was a really enjoyable storm to chase until we got on roads that had been dumped on. Driving on muddy roads in a malibu isn't the funnest thing in the world.