Mike Hollingshead

Tornado warned supercell nw of Pender Nebraska. This thing looked ok early on, then looked like garbage. Then as we were punching east into it, so we could stay with it by going south on the highway over, it became tornado warned as scud began lifting pretty good. We were in hard rfd winds from the north, in the slot as we did so. Then as we drove under and east of the lowering we were in strong easterly winds. Then we got to our highway to drop south and one point the easterly winds rapidly switched to westerly. This was all a few minutes before the above image. It was pretty amazing to see just how crappy this thing was before it did all that.

Same time and location. We are looking to the west in the vault area. There were a couple nice bands curling back to the nw. It didn't look decent like this for very long before it got very linear again and died.

I was basically heading home when I happened upon this. As I made it into Decatur NE, along the Missouri River, I noticed two bright fireworks go off ne of town. I wasn't sure where they were exactly, but knew they were the start of the show(you know those big alert flash/booms they do to get you ready). I could go east across the toll bridge to Onawa Iowa, or I could turn south on 75 and drive straight home. I just about turned south but said screw it, I'll go see where these are at. There was really no lightning at this point, as the cell I'd been on was dying fast. As I turn east in town to head over the bridge, I see the show start. I was rather surprised to see they were right there in town. I drive across the toll bridge and pull over. There was no lightning still, but I could see two small towers to the nw. I began shooting the show and the one tower flickered. I thought, no way, this is going to actually happen. It took a while for that tower to get going, but soon it was pretty active, though 95% were all in cloud with no visible bolts. Not long into it, my dying storm was sprinkling on me(ahead of this one, the one I'd been chasing earlier). It didn't affect the shooting much though.


Got a lot of these I'll have to add later. Most of them were just the illuminated tower.