09/06/2007 REPORTS: KS/NE/IL

[Darin Brunin]

It was quite an interesting day and night. Dick McGowan and I were on the tornado warned storms in N. KS. The storm mode was one was one of the most interesting that I have chased as it seemed storms were back-building on the warm front, then congealing with the rest of the line, but still able to form nice inflow notches, briefly wrapping up and trying to put down some tornadoes. We watched several failed attempts at tornadogenesis but still enjoyed seeing a couple of funnels. I will put up more photos tomorrow.

 

[Roger Hill]

I couldn't resist a chase yesterday too. I decided to play farther north. Caught a stringbean storm north of Lexington, NE that actually TRIED to get organized. Then saw the massive explosion south of town near Holdridge, NE. This storm had decent structure, a ragged wall cloud and beat me nicely with 1.5" diameter hail covering the ground. It gusted out rather QUICKLY, so I went west on Highway 4 and caught a stunning striated supercell near Oxford, NE. This storm had a hail roar from hell, along with a 40 mile long inflow band, multiple striations with a tilted, circular base, a HUGE occasionally rotating wall cloud that mostly wrapped in rain, but once in awhile was visible. Twice it produced funnels, one which was halfway to the ground, a truncated cone, but I could never confirm a touchdown as it wrapped in rain again. It was TOR warned too with a nice hook. Electrical activity was quite spectacular!

Let it run me over north of Republican City, NE with golfball sized hail and probably 65 MPH winds. I'll have an account and photos up the weekend at my web site: www.stormchase.net

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Sweet bolt Darin! Seems impossible to get those close like that and not be in rain.

I had a similar day to Roger's, but I never found the storm all that great. I probably didn't have the right view at the right times though.

http://www.extremeinstability.com/07-9-6.htm
Anyway, full account is there. Watch out for that first image, lol, it may get you! (lol I hope you can't see anything...I don't think you can and I think I'm safe)

 

[Jonathan Merage]

Awesome lightning shot, Darin! I also chased south central NE. Skirted back & forth on I-80 waiting for the storms to get organized. As Roger mentioned, the real show started when the storms went up near that area around 7:00. I took 183 south towards Holdrege & got cored by another storm on the way. Caught a well-defined short-lived gustnado just north of Hays Center on the north side of the storm at 6:45 (will post more pics & video on my site).

The gustnado with dirt swirl. Sorry the shot's a bit out of focus.

Again like Roger said, that gusted out quickly but the bigger convection was already going up just southwest. Trying to get closer to the storms I took H23 east through Maywood & stopped at Curtis to snap some shots of the western flank of the pre-tornadic supercell.

Took this around 7:30, the tornado warning was issued for Harlan County (Alma) about 8:00. The storm had a nice hook at this time.

Continued southeast on H18 but the storm speed picked up to 45-50mph due southeast. With daylight fading I tried to keep up but was too far west & poor road conditions made it impossible, so I maintained visual & continued east from Cambridge. Definitely enjoyed the lightning show with bolts of all varieties just shooting out of every part of the storm!

 

[Dick McGowan]

A few pics from this day with Darin......lightning didn't illuminate features very well. We had a tough time seeing things.

8:04 p.m. ~3 miles NE of Frankfort, KS on Highway 9 looking west.

About 15 minutes later at 8:19 p.m....looking north (about 8 miles to the east of the previous location)and about 10 minutes after it was first tornado warned. Nice cut in there.

Storm would weaken, so we ditched it for this one east of Marysville and west of Seneca......and weren't too impressed, and went back south of Seneca on the highway and went to Kelly Rogers Road. Photo is just a few miles west of Seneca at 9:06 p.m.

South of Seneca, we could see a lowering to our east on the tornado-warned storm we first ditched, and on a new notch to our w/nw, definitely saw a lowering with a nice tail cloud that was right over the town of Seneca. Storms began to line out, so we stopped north of Holton, KS and saw this nice shelf cloud.

 

[Rocky Rascovich]

I was at least expecting a couple of good storms along with a raging squall line into the night for areas close to Grand Island on east. Capping issues and lack of low level flow inhibited convection ontil after 0Z. pretty much threw in the towel and was heading west just to look at what I thought was going to be some frontal out flow dominated junk.

What I did see was a lone cell develop between Minden and Holdrege.
a strikingly crisp anvil and eventually a barrel shaped updraft with intense convection came into sight. This cell became SVR warned for Franklin Co. and the southwest portion of the storm was TOR warned in Harlan Co. I saw this cell from about 15mi. away. Had a nice wall cloud to it but rotation from at least where I was did'nt look impressive. the storm overall had some nice structure to it with several midlevel inflow bands. In cloud lightning was almost continuous, but with very little cg's.

I eventually followed this storm to Campbell, then north to Hastings.. where it quickly became outflow dominant. No hail was observed, top winds around 40mph in Blue Hill. An interesting note, surface wind even close to the cell was very light... under 10mph at most, ontil the gust front caught up to me.

Thanks to Bobby Prentice, Jim Leonard and Dave Ewoldt for great nowcasting as usual.