06/03/2010 REPORTS: NE/SD

[Jeremy Den Hartog]

Ended up getting kind of a late start today but made it to Nebraska in time for the show. No tornadoes today but still overall a good day with some very nice storm structure and a few wall clouds plus we drove through what I'm pretty sure was a 'gustnado' (but I've been wrong before - I'll probably post a video as with the images I have you can't see it spin).

I'm to tired to really write to much more but here are a few images from the day (all from central Nebraska):

 

[Chris Hayes]

Initially targetted the O'Neill, Nebraska area yesterday. Went there and hung out for a while watching the situation evolve while having lunch. Saw the first storm go up near the SD border and three more down south. Finally decided to go after the storms further south. Got on the northern most storm that went tornado warned before it went severe warned and saw a wall cloud. This storm quickly began to weaken so we went south to intercept the next storm coming up. We got on it and saw a wall cloud just as it was starting to go HP. We headed a bit further south and got awesome storm structure shots of it. As it quicly evolved it began to get a May 27, 2001 appearance to it and winds were picking up blowing large amounts of dust out in front of it. I decided to go ahead and let it chase us so we raced east on 92, stopping a few times to get structure shots and video. After a while of doing this we decided to make our way back to Grand Island. On the way there we interecepted another HP northeast of the city. This storm had some powerful outflow as well and began whipping up numerous gustnados, one of which was very large. Terminated the chase after that.

First two pictures is of the first HP in it's initial stage and as it was approaching 283 just before we got in 92

This third picture is of the final supercell we intercepted NE of Grand Island a little bit before it pushed out a lot of wind causing a gustnadofest

 

[Travis Klanecky]

Began the afternoon with our initial target of Taylor, Ne. Made it to Burwell as a storm was popping up near Taylor. While dropping some small size hail, looked like that particular cell wasn't going to get it's act together as it was fairly high based, so we decided to drop south to Ord and get on the storm in NE Custer county. About that time, the storm up in Burwell goes tor warned. Played the back and forth game for awhile before finally deciding on the southern storms. Had to book it down HWY 11 to North Loup ahead of the heaviest precip to get to the south of the tor warned cell in Valley county. Traveling south of North Loup toward Davis Creek Dam, we saw some great structure to our west. A nice, low hanging wall cloud, but with little rotation. Beyond this point, supercell became outflow dominant as it got sucked into the cell to the SW moving into Sherman county. Outflow winds actually overtook us, kicking up walls of dust as we got closer to Ashton. At one point, actually saw a decent size tree branch flying through the air to our west. From there we raced east on HWY 92 along with the walls of dust heading toward St. Paul. From there, that storm started to piddle out. About that time, a new cell began developing to the west, so we traveled back towards Dannebrog to get a good view. Eventually made it to Grand Island where the storm really started to look nice again to our northeast. Kept with the storm to Aurora, before calling it a night as it became dark. Did not get a glimpse of the gustnadofest as we were just a little behind looking at HP.

All in all, it was a fun chase despite no tornado sightings. Will have to keep an eye on this unsettled pattern through the next several days.

 

[Stephen Shield]

here are two lightning shots from last night of the storm near Seward, NE

 

[Tyler Burg]

Started the day sitting in Taylor, NE as well, storms went up just to the west but also one up near the SD border that had me drift north, but the explosive photogenic updrafts to the south kept me from continuing north. Didn't have data so I was just kinda sticking with this storm, it had moments where it tried, but just couldn't do much. Micheal Phelps came over and told me that this storm now looked like crap on radar and the ones to the SW were probably going to be the storms of the day. So we take hwy 70 SW into a monsoon. End up getting ahead of the base south of St. Paul where I sat for a good 20 minutes and let it come to me, it was interesting how quickly it developed cool structure. Followed this a bit south, but never got enough south of it to get the good structure shots. Then after having to core it again I got south of Central city and a new updraft went up to the NW and provided a lot of CGs. Overall an Ok day, not what I expected.

 

[Dean Baron]

Late post for this but the single photos by themselves did not do this storm justice and I just got the time to do a stitch. I got stuck north of the river this day and didnt really get a chance to intercept until the storms had gone outflow dominant south of Yankton. But the storm was still a beauty. Two shot stitch from about 10 miles south of Yankton.