06/04/08 REPORTS: NE/IA/IL

[Mike Peregrine]

Brief report from the road, to be completed later. We chased the Aurora-York-Ulysses, Nebraska supercell this afternoon/evening. Coming up through SE Nebraska, we could see what became the Red Oak/Corning storm to our east, dismissing the possibility of intercepting, but amazed at the structure from the backside. Enormous overshooting top, very powerful, crisp looking tower.

We arrived on our storm north of Aurora, Nebraska. Very nice meso, strong inflow. We really felt like it had a chance to produce then, but the storm erupted with convection across its western flank. We spent the next two hours piggy-backing areas of circulation that would transition to outflow, then cycle back. Definitely HP, the gust front was very prominent on the storm, as precip would continually work its way back into the circulation, making visibility very difficult.

West of Ulysses, the meso became well defined again, and a fairly broad area of circulation appeared to develop, along with a very dusty looking area that we could not discern clearly - but it could have well been tornadic at that point. Some light damage in this area as well.

Looking north from Ulysses, the meso sharpened up suddenly and we noticed a funnel, but were not in a position to determine ground contact. Reports came in from both law enforcement and chasers of a tornado in this area. Getting around the roads was something else. Miles and miles of gravel and minimum maintenance, that's all I know.

Moving south out of town, we got whacked with some crazy wind/precip in a big way. It was worse than Kearney last week, and pretty harrowing to say the least. We tried staying ahead of the storm as it turned southeast here, but took forever to get south and in position where we felt comfortable again. About 20 minutes or so later, I grabbed radar image that made the supercell appear like an enormous hurricane, with bands rotating around a common center. Pretty cool image, similar to those seen in years past.

We came south out of Lincoln, through Nebraska City, where the line of storms had one last suprise in the form of a spectacular wall cloud north of Neb City embedded along the line. Was producing a TVS on radar, but the wall cloud was just about as good as stuff we had seen earlier.

Photos coming.

 

[Darin Brunin]

6/4/08 Reports:IA/NE/CO/IL/MO/KS

The curse of Iowa is over! After chasing probably 20 times in Iowa before and never seeing a tornado...Dick McGowan, my girlfriend, and I saw 3 possibly 4 tornadoes(depending on if one had a continuous track or was two different ones) from the supercell that tracked eastward from Plattsmouth. Another HP monster....more to come later.

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

I might have made a mistake by not jumping on the SW IA convection when I had the chance, however my day ended up OK as I added to my 2008 tornado count when I filmed a breif tornado near and just East of Ulysses. The video isn't great as the tornado was low contrast and breif and I was driving....

Currently working on Video upload

Edit: Youtube is super slow and I don't have access to my site right now, so until youtube finishes its hour long fiasco a couple of vid grabs...

 

[Damon Scott Hynes]

Camped out south of Hastings, watched a bunch of high-based turkey towers before heading north to Grand Island.

Just east of GI, it went TOR with another TOR storm 20 mi east of it. The only spot during my trip where I had road compromises due to the Platte River, so I chose US-30 when I should have gone on US-6. This meant I was on the north side of the meso for the better part of two hours, insane inflow, and nonstop quarter-size hail. Just north of Ulysses on NE-92, inflow was at ground level, I kept looking off to the south but never saw a thing.

I kept probing the storm in an attempt to get to the south side, but big hail at Central City and Valparaiso kept me to the north, I could only head south at Wahoo, and I still got cored! Bu the time I made Ashland the tornado threat was over, but that was the most massive supercell I've seen in years. Unfortunately, I was in a white-knuckle race to stay out out the bear's cage so no pics of that!

 

[Tyler Allison]

first time in over a year I've been out on a real "chase". Everything goes to Paul Sirvatka at CoD...I wouldn't have gone that far by myself

We were on the eastern storm along the warm front south of Omaha in Iowa going east/west on I34 between Emerson and Corning. Most of the chasers where on the early storms that fired to our west in Nebraska. We were coming in from Chicago so opted for the eastern end of the warm front when one popped right as we showed up east of Omaha.

First tornado only Paul saw..and it was more of a "dust whirl" than a tornado he says. The second was obviously a tornado. But I was too busy looking at data and submitting the report that the only chance I had to snap a picture was when we were repositioning. Dave Mayhew/Paul got much better ones.

Third one I never got a picture of as I switched to video since Dave and Paul were on their expensive cameras ....I think I got it but haven't had time to check. I was running data (of course) with my head down in the screen but happened to look up and scan behind the car (as I was trained by CoD) and yell'd "TORNADO" and everybody turned around and started snapping. Of course I'm throwing SN reports in while everybody else is shooting pictures That's okay...that's what I'm good at.

Also got a call from Omaha NWS (via SN) asking for ground truth. Yeah! It works!

-Tyler

 

[Josh Murfield]

We were on the York-Ulysses storm as it went TOR warned just NE of York. We stayed just behind it watching some occasional lowering and rotation as we drove the gravel roads from just north of York over to HWY 15 just north of Seward. By then we had made the mistake of getting out ahead of the storm around the time that a tornado was being reported in the Bee area (couldn't see anything but curtains of rain from our vantage point by then). So we headed back down to Seward just as the tornado sirens were going off there, and again as we tried to get ahead of the storm we screamed east on HWY 34 to get back to Lincoln- ended up in the hail and torrential rain the entire way.
So, once again we ended up in perfect location but once again my impatience took us out of position. I guess it's glaringly obvious that I'm still a real newbie out there.

 

[John Farley]

Central IL tornado 6-4-08

I caught a large multiple-vortex tornado around sunset this evening northwest of Bloomington, IL, near where Tazewell, McLean, and Woodford Counties come together.

When I first got in position to view it, about 5 minutes after its initial formation, it was a stout stovepipe, under a large, low wall cloud:

Similar image, more cropped/zoomed:

It evolved into a multiple-vortex structure:

It was fascinating to watch during this phase, as new condensation fingers would form, rotate around the wall cloud, and dissipate, only to be replaced by another new one. Occasionally there were 2 or 3 visible at the same time.

Toward the end, it became larger, and began to wrap in rain:

It was on the ground, at least intermittently, for a good 20 minutes. I watched it for about 15. I will post a full report when time permits - after chasing 2 days in a row, I am getting a little behind! But after getting on tornadic supercells but missing the tornadoes the last 2 chases, this was a very pleasant change. My best chase of the year, and one of my best ever!

Mods, can IL be added to the thread title?

 

[Eric Treece]

Wouldn't it be great to chase a tornadic supercell that isn't dumping enough rain to need an ark and decent road network to chase it on?! Started off the day in Colby, KS and headed north after the Tornado Warned storm in Yuma County CO made its right turn (it started headed NNW after its initiation.) After a splash and go in Imperial, NE I intercepted the Yuma storm just south of Champion, NE. After heading back up to Imperial to get back ahead of the storm and then south to the notch, I was headed east on the east/west jog out of Imperial on Hwy 6 and took a quick look over my shoulder and could see a well defined funnel wrapping up in precip. By time I found a place to turn off and face south there was another funnel forming what looked to be to the ESE of the first one. I know at least one of them were reported as touching down, but I can't confirm or deny the report. If I were to guess, I would say it was the funnel wrapping up with precip because I filmed a good portion of the 2nd funnels short life and never saw a debris spin up. I headed south of Enders Reservoir for a time to see if the storm would get its act together before I had to retreat back to the north and reposition. It never really did but would keep teasing me into holding my position longer than I should have and I had to let the core go by and then jog my way back ahead of the storm and intercept it again near Hayes Center. There was another report of a tornado, although I never saw one and I was in a fairly decent position. I will have to look at the video when I get some time and see. I was more fascinated by the structure of the storm itself. I decided to go north from my position almost into Hayes Center itself. Bad idea. REALLY BAD IDEA! As I was just starting into town I heard the warning on NOAA radio and they were calling for "up to golf ball size hail." Well I didn't think anything of golf balls as I have been down that road numerous times. All of a sudden there was what seemed like a white explosion on the road ahead of me.....then another.....and another.....and holy o'cow baseballs and softballs were falling everywhere! I did a quick u-turn and hauled out of town as I knew I wouldn't be in deep for too long, but it was too late.......I only hope the video of the hail smashing my windshield is as dramatic as it was seeing it happen before my eyes. I waited until the core was good and gone and headed back into town to gather some samples and throw them in the cooler for the ride back home. After that mission was completed I headed back to Hamlet and intercepted the storm on the last ones SW flank. Ran ahead of it until around Palisade, NE and called it a night. Fun chase! I needed a new windshield anyway.


Two funnels south of Imperial, NE.

Storm approaching Hayes Center, NE

No explanation needed.

2nd storm approaching Hamlet, NE.

Same storm approaching Palisade, NE.

 

[Darrin Rasberry]

Chased for the first time without an experienced partner today - what a way to get my feet wet. It was me, a roommate, crappy AT&T with a barely readable radar on the cell, a severe radio that kept running low on the "rechargeable" batteries, and three somewhat concerned but excellent nowcasters (Fabian Guerra, Craig Maire II, Bill Schintler).

Headed to the NE/KS border where all I initially got was a free few hours in a sauna. After my nowcasters pointed me toward the convection that would turn into the slow-moving, picturesque supercell that spent all that time crawling through Iowa so slowly that Lance Armstrong could've chased it, I was treated to not one - no, with me, it can't be just one - but TWO one-lane construction farkaroos on Highway 30, backing me up 50 minutes. The second one I had a second-from-front row seat to enjoy, and it was taking so long that apparently the construction workers were doing some sort of questionnaire. I think he either saw the look on my face or the steam rising from my head, because he gave my car a miss as he was going up the line - good thing, too, since I would've had a few Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force type answers to donate about their absolutely unnecessary "repavement project."

Nonetheless, we headed north, since everything down there had absolutely zero chance of firing. When we reached Lincoln, the Iowa sup was just crossing the river, but we were still 50 miles away from the border. Even though it was moving at 12 mph, I didn't want to risk it since we had no way of telling where the storm would end up when we got to its current position at that time approximately one hour away (answer to stupid idiot self: 12 miles to the northeast, durrrrrrrrrrrrr). When you chase the direct wrong way, then eat at McDonalds, then drive back with your roommate sleeping after the stroke of midnight, and you're WORRIED ABOUT THE STORM YOU THOUGHT WOULD GET AWAY FROM YOU SEVEN HOURS BEFOREHAND, you know you err'd.

Instead, we went over to York, and trucked it north on 81 about ten miles N of York just as the storm was really kicking in. We witnessed some pretty ominous (and fast) rotation off to our west, and sat back to enjoy the show for a while. But the area of rotation got wider -read: moved closer - and we left. The reason? A spotter next to us and two chasers on the road down from us simultaneously left the area while we could still see rotation and a defined lowering. Now I'm no leech (no laptop nor a real working radar with the spotter network on it, anyway) but I'm also no fool, and since I've only been doing this for three months and I didn't have an experienced chase partner with me, when I see a spotter and two chasers right next to me leave at the same time to a safer area, there could be a distinct possibility that I'm about to get whacked by something I don't see.

So, I went south to York, pulled in at a Chinese buffet, and watched another interesting area as the storm just kept backbuilding and backbuilding. At that point I knew a bow echo was imminent, and my window of opportunity was shrinking quickly.

I headed over to Seward and went north about three miles, where I entered a black and swirly area not unlike my Parkersburg experience. It was TOR warned; didn't wanna exactly go there. We went back into Seward just as the sirens were going off and hail was starting to fall; I stopped at the Casey's there to make sure they weren't blowing sirens for the area SW of there that had shown some brief rotation, and to film what I thought to be an incoming golfball-sized core (turned out it was about three or four miles north, so we only got pennies).

Was told to go essentially to the Bee area (which produced) but I did NOT want to go in there with my lack of experience and without anyone with experience, so I opted for the warned area headed toward Lincoln instead. I proceeded down 34 where I experienced my first ever soloed coring, and got nailed with high winds beating more penny-sized hail on my car. Experienced either strong inflow or a downburst around the 34/I-80 turnoff that nearly shook my car off the road, and then just like that, I was in the clear slot. Tried to position around Lincoln to watch what turned out to be a disintegrating TOR-warned structure, and then I got lost in Lincoln. That was pretty much the end of my night.

All in all, an exciting chase day, especially considering this was my first ever non-local-spotting chase without an experienced partner. Of course I would've liked the easy supercell in my home territory instead of this bloody but fun mess, but I figured if I chased that one from behind it would start taking off at 100mph away from me for some reason and the day would've ended in a total bust. I knew it wouldn't change its slow speed when I decided on the York storm, so all of you out there who got that sup should PM me a thank you letter.

I'll regret not seeing that cell in my backyard, but I went out and learned and had fun on my own for the first time today, and besides, I wouldn't have seen any severe weather at all if I'd just stayed at home watching movies and waiting for my vacation to end.

 

[PeteMcConnell]

I left Hastings with Jeff Crecelius at @ 4:30 and we took off down I80 east toward the nearest storm we thought had potential. We ran into Ryan Pfeifer and his friend Shad from Omaha. We watched a couple of storms try really hard to put down tornadoes, but they just couldn't quite do it. Then we decided to chase the storm that did damage in Ulysses. I was so focused on trying to get to the large tornado that was on the ground, that I momentarily forgot the other area of rotation that was building. I quickly came to my senses when the shear marker on my xm hovered over my van. I quickly made a u-turn and led the caravan south to avoid death or any other negative thing from happening. We made it into town by the skin of our teeth and gassed up while meeting yet another chaser. No tornado today but Thursday appears to be another opportunity. Hastings(my home town) got hit with some 75 mph wind gusts at @ 1a.m. with lots of tree damage. It could have been a lot worse, but honestly I haven't heard the wind howl like it did tonight in a long time.

 

[Tim Marshall]

SHORT: A 600 mile OUCH.

LONG: Target was the nose of the dryline from Hays to Great Bend. Kay and I had lunch in Hays. I realized the cap would prevent convection in KS, so we retargeted the I-80 storms on the warm front and headed north. We saw a line of supercells along the front, and selected the tail end storm that anchored south of Lexington, NE. It that had a wall cloud but quickly became elevated. Other cells developed to the south and merged into the mess. The storms looked great going up with crisp towers, but were sheared and had mushy looking anvils. We eventually gave up on the Lexington storms and headed west to sample another supercell northwest of McCook. This storm had 138+ MPH shear on the Baron and looked good on radar, but also was elevated. There were numerous tornado warnings on these elevated storms and lots of tornado reports, but we saw no tornadoes. We ended up the day with a quick dinner in McCook before heading back to Salina. On our way back, another line of storms developed along the KS/NE border and gave us an incredible light show all the way back with flash rates greater than one per second. Cross winds on I-70 made it difficult to keep the vehicle on the road. Those poor 18-wheelers really had a tough time. TM

 

[Jason Branz]

Left Scott City KS around 11 a.m. and moseyed around west central KS until it was obvious that (1) the cap was going to suppress everything, and (2) the cirrus moving in from CO would make sure any wannabes were suppressed too. Headed north to Holdredge toward the tail-end T-warned storm closing in on Lexington, but it was outflow-dominant and c-c-cold. Saw the storms moving into SW NE, plotted a course through Frontier County, and headed that way. Caught up to the storm near Stockville, and observed the fantastic structure, complete with dark green hail core and beautiful striations. Watched that for a while, then dropped back south to 6/34 as it looked to be weakening. Enjoyed a light show near McCook, then dropped down to GLD, had a couple of Shastas, and called it a night. Not too bad of a day.

 

[Chris Hayes]

Initially targeted NC/NW Kansas but dashed up to central Nebraska because of the obviously strong cap. We watched the storms up in central Nebraska. Watched them for a couple of hours, and saw some decent storm structure. Decided to head back to Salina shortly before dark. Saw an awesome lightning show from the storms on the KS/NE border.

 

[Charles Kuster]

We Spent most of the day in Phillipsburg, KS waiting for the cap to break. We finally decided that this would not occur, so we moved north towards Holdrege, NE. When we reached Holdrege, the storm to our northwest became tornado warned and we moved north towards Elm Creek and Odessa. Never really saw much from the storm and it weakened as it moved towards Kearney.

We then moved west towards the supercells coming out of western Nebraska and northeastern Colorado. The first moved very close to Eustis, Nebraska. It had decent structure and as Tim mentioned, was elevated. As that storm moved into Lexington I checked the radar and saw the next supercell northeast of McCook. Due to the fact that it was well after dark and the visibility was poor due to low clouds and haze, (surface observation at Kearney at the time was temp: 64 dewpoint: 63) we decided not to chase the storm and move towards Kearney.

The storm was still tornado warned and was supposed to be producing baseball size hail as it approached Kearney. When I decided that the tornado would miss Kearney we moved the car to some shelter and let the storm hit us. Between about 12:00am and 12:10am, we experienced quarter to golf ball size hail accompanied by ~70mph winds. A tornado was reported 3 miles south of town, but we never saw any tornadoes with any of the storms yesterday.

 

[Laura Duchesne]

We intercepted three supercells in western Nebraska yesterday. The first one was trying to form a wall cloud. It also had a thin long beaver tail, and some neat structure. When we figured the tornado threat with this storm was no longer imminent, we skirted the core (Baron was picking up approx. 3 inch stones). We saw a gas fire, and luckily a sheriff was just down the road so we told him about it. We played around with this storm a bit more, but by now it was just a big shelf cloud which eventually evolved into a classic roll cloud. We gave up once it become outflow dominant.

The second storm was a very nice barrel shaped LP supercell just to our west. Incredible structure. We went underneath it and saw the entire base of this thing was rain free. Eerie and amazing at the same time. This photo is not very good.

This storm had no tornado threat, so we bailed it and went towards the massive supercell that has been going on for hours from Denver. We were just due east of it and watched a spectacular light show with structure! Some chasers or spotters told us a tornado was reported near some town (I forget the name) and we were going to go intercept it but given the lack of roads, we did not want to risk getting stuck in mud in the dark with a tornado risk. No tornadoes but a great day nonetheless.