JamesCaruso
Staff member
OK, I'll be the first one (and hopefully not the only one) to talk about the disappointment of this day.
We left Kearney in the morning and sat at a service station in Ansley, Nebraska for over four hours. Met tons of great chasers, saw the DOW crew and a TIV; the place was surrounded by chasers on all sides. Talked to a few locals and told them to take any warnings seriously. Reviewing the obs each hour seemed to confirm we were in an ideal location.
We initially ignored the messy stuff going up to our north; seemed like most everyone else was doing the same. Then we saw a tornado warning go up for the embedded cell near Ord and off we went. We encountered a construction stop going east out of town; three or four chasers ahead of us turned around and we followed suit. The 15 minutes or so this wasted may have been significant. We also might have been better off just waiting out the construction delay, but seeing everyone else turn around led us to believe it was either completely blocked or was going to be a particularly long delay.
Due to the fast motion (45-55 mph reported at various times), we ended up approaching the storm from the southwest. Outflow was strong even outside of the "main" RFD. In fact, a vehicle towing a recreational trailer had been blown over. The people were out of their vehicle walking around and seemed fine, another vehicle (chaser) had already stopped (not sure if he was somehow involved), another vehicle had already stopped on the other side of the road aways ahead of the incident warning people to slow down, and a fire department vehicle was approaching, so we continued on.
We entered the southern tip of the hook / appendage from the west, knowing that the circulation was far enough ahead of us and, if anything, was moving further away given the 5-10 minute delay in the radar. We were behind at least one other chaser and ahead of a number of others. We were on route 22 all the way to Fullerton but were basically barely able to keep pace with the storm and just could not break out of the heavy rain and get into the clear area that seemed so close and yet so far. At Fullerton we went south on 14 and tried going east again on 92; we thought we would be able to clear the precip to our north but once again we found ourselves having to enter the heavy rain again from the west. It was deja vu all over again. Finally we permanently bailed out to the south on 15 near Garrison, with the storm now having just been svr-warned for quite some time, and went to Lincoln for the night.
Except for an isolated storm in the Nebraska Panhandle that was tor-warned beginning a little later in the evening, this storm we were on was the only one tor-warned in Nebraska in that entire huge mess. I know there were confirmed tornados on it so wondering if anyone got a good look; I assume they were all brief and/or rain wrapped. In retrospect if we had gone further east and then north for an intercept we might have been in better position. Candidly, we failed to account for such high storm speeds when we first departed Ansley for an intercept.
Aside from the overall disappointment of the event, I hate when I am out on a chase vacation, there is a severe weather outbreak like this that makes the news such that even people back home in the Philadelphia area hear about it, and they can't fathom why we didn't see anything! ;-)
Looking forward to hearing about others' experiences and also some commentary from those more knowledgeable than me about why things went into the crapper as they did (recognizing that should be a MISC thread; I will start it with this same question if no one else starts it first with an answer...)
Jim
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
We left Kearney in the morning and sat at a service station in Ansley, Nebraska for over four hours. Met tons of great chasers, saw the DOW crew and a TIV; the place was surrounded by chasers on all sides. Talked to a few locals and told them to take any warnings seriously. Reviewing the obs each hour seemed to confirm we were in an ideal location.
We initially ignored the messy stuff going up to our north; seemed like most everyone else was doing the same. Then we saw a tornado warning go up for the embedded cell near Ord and off we went. We encountered a construction stop going east out of town; three or four chasers ahead of us turned around and we followed suit. The 15 minutes or so this wasted may have been significant. We also might have been better off just waiting out the construction delay, but seeing everyone else turn around led us to believe it was either completely blocked or was going to be a particularly long delay.
Due to the fast motion (45-55 mph reported at various times), we ended up approaching the storm from the southwest. Outflow was strong even outside of the "main" RFD. In fact, a vehicle towing a recreational trailer had been blown over. The people were out of their vehicle walking around and seemed fine, another vehicle (chaser) had already stopped (not sure if he was somehow involved), another vehicle had already stopped on the other side of the road aways ahead of the incident warning people to slow down, and a fire department vehicle was approaching, so we continued on.
We entered the southern tip of the hook / appendage from the west, knowing that the circulation was far enough ahead of us and, if anything, was moving further away given the 5-10 minute delay in the radar. We were behind at least one other chaser and ahead of a number of others. We were on route 22 all the way to Fullerton but were basically barely able to keep pace with the storm and just could not break out of the heavy rain and get into the clear area that seemed so close and yet so far. At Fullerton we went south on 14 and tried going east again on 92; we thought we would be able to clear the precip to our north but once again we found ourselves having to enter the heavy rain again from the west. It was deja vu all over again. Finally we permanently bailed out to the south on 15 near Garrison, with the storm now having just been svr-warned for quite some time, and went to Lincoln for the night.
Except for an isolated storm in the Nebraska Panhandle that was tor-warned beginning a little later in the evening, this storm we were on was the only one tor-warned in Nebraska in that entire huge mess. I know there were confirmed tornados on it so wondering if anyone got a good look; I assume they were all brief and/or rain wrapped. In retrospect if we had gone further east and then north for an intercept we might have been in better position. Candidly, we failed to account for such high storm speeds when we first departed Ansley for an intercept.
Aside from the overall disappointment of the event, I hate when I am out on a chase vacation, there is a severe weather outbreak like this that makes the news such that even people back home in the Philadelphia area hear about it, and they can't fathom why we didn't see anything! ;-)
Looking forward to hearing about others' experiences and also some commentary from those more knowledgeable than me about why things went into the crapper as they did (recognizing that should be a MISC thread; I will start it with this same question if no one else starts it first with an answer...)
Jim
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD