2014-06-03 REPORTS: NE/KS/CO/IA

[JamesCaruso]

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

 

[Jeff House]

We saw some gustnadoes and one somewhat more traditional tornado. Looks like we took the exact same route from Ord but we were maybe 15-20 minutes ahead. Most of the chase convoy was always behind us. I chased with Dorian Burnette.

We were lucky passing through Ord at the same time as the meso, but were not impacted. We must have been just ahead of it. Missed the first tornado reported. Next 2/3 cycles we booked gustnadoes quickly turning into RFD dust monsters. The middle cycle of the three dropped a more traditional barrel tornado (big landspout?) that lasted about ten min. Low contrast looks like a saucer or shallow bowl above, with a column/barrel of dust below. That was just south of Fullerton. Seems south of main meso, so perhaps just a large version of the rest. We were not going to try for the main meso at Fullerton since Hwy 22 follows a river on the north side. One bridge out on an escape route and we're dead. Dropped south on 281 instead, and booked the dusty wide column described above. Fourth cycle we saw was another gustnado. Then we left through LNK.

On I-29 we enjoyed 40+ mph inflow near Nebraska City but fortunately for nearby residents the storm was no longer rooted. Such strong but cool inflow was odd, but very neat to watch. Being on the cool side of the boundary promoted awesome scary looking clouds for our drive home until dark. Then the lightning show rocked!

 

[Mike Marz]

This was one of my best views but even when I was closer near Ord I could only see a huge mess of rain. The hills in that area were making it tough along with the storm motion. Really interested to see any pics or video of the tornadoes reported with this storm, I can't find any. The inflow was nuts driving east away from it. I love any kind of storm, but it'd be nice to see one soon that doesn't have it's base 10ft off the ground.

 

[Daniel Rodriguez]

@James, we were the chasers I believe you were talking about stopped next to the over turned truck/trailer (we were in the silver Xterra). We were not involved in anyway, we just happened upon it and made sure the occupants where uninjured (which they were). Sounds like we took basically the same course you guys did; between the vicious winds, rain and fast moving system we just couldnt break through.

 

[Todd Rector]

I love any kind of storm, but it'd be nice to see one soon that doesn't have it's base 10ft off the ground.

I was up 218 a little North of Greeley Center. Strong inflow was kicking up so much dust and cloud bases were so low, I couldn't tell where one stopped and the other began. Visibility was terrible, there were 10 mesos on the radar I couldn't possibly see, there was a chaser-induced traffic jam in St. Paul, and that's when it hit me: I should be driving home

Another concern for me in this particular chase region was the lack of a decent road grid. Specifically near Greeley Center, you had to either go North (into the MCS) or South 5-10 miles before a solid East/West option presented. Not a good scenario for safely observing a fast-moving system.

Regardless, there was an incredible amount of energy in this system. If it were all focused in an isolated supercell, we would be picking up pieces of Nebraska in Indiana today.

TREX

 

[Ryan Connelly-]

I'm a Hollings scholar working on my project at NWS Sioux Falls. One of the forecasters there was off yesterday, so we decided to head out and give it a shot.

We left Sioux Falls about 15z and headed south through Yankton, then west on US 20 for a little while, and ended up zig-zagging through Nebraska, stopping in Neligh to gas up and ending up in Burwell by about 19z, which we had targeted upon leaving.

We were right on the edge of the stratus deck at that point, so we decided to head southwest a little bit more to Broken Bow where, if I remember right, it was 86/71 at 19z. Lexington had already started mixing out, with their dew point dropping from 68 to 63 in one hour, so we decided to not go any farther south. Storms were forming to our north along the warm front, but they were messy almost as soon as they formed, and we saw a cu field on vis sat by North Platte, so we decided to drift west out of town and try to get a look at the sky, ignoring the stuff to the north. A few showers also briefly showed up on North Platte's radar that we hoped would grow pretty quickly.

After about 20 minutes, those showers had evaporated, and the storm near Ord and Burwell was a monster supercell. We lost our patience, went back through Broken Bow, and started flying northeast. Unfortunately, as others mentioned, we too were caught off guard by storm motions, and already being way too far behind at that point, we gave up and decided to go west, ending up in some terrain due north of BBW trying to get a glimpse of the twin supercells that had formed pretty much on top of North Platte's radar. They were elevated, though, as the OFB from the Burwell supercell had already undercut them and was propagating south pretty quickly. So we decided to go south and hope that the showers that were forming to our southwest would perhaps strengthen and drop a tornado as they crossed that boundary which by now was going through BBW.

Unfortunately, as others mentioned, the road network in the eastern edge of the Sand Hills leaves something to be desired, so we had to go a ways east to get to US 183 where we could fly south. This stretch of road is the only place where we saw definitive chasers, and they were all well-behaved except for one gray armored SUV (license plate VORTMAX) that tailed me for a while while I was pushing 75 mph, and finally passed me going about 85. Others have said that on their live stream they were pointing at a hail shaft and screaming "rain-wrapped tornado!" so that gives you an idea of their skill level.

Anyway, back to the chase. We finally made it down to NE 40, and started moving back northwest, by which point we were looking straight ahead at a classic supercell with a huge cirrus shield and lots of mammatus (first picture).

As we got closer, we could see a wall cloud in the distance that was under the second supercell (second pic), but we were too far out to tell if there was any rotation in it.

They both jumped over the OFB shortly after, becoming elevated, so we decided to head back into BBW for a third time and get some dinner. While there, the storms we were chasing moved just north and started congealing with the bigger complex. We thought we were safe in town, but ended up getting skirted by the storm and taking about 10 minutes of hail. It started out small and ramped up gradually; finally, a hen egg size stone hit and shattered the corner of my windshield.

After that we waited another hour for that core to move east of 183 so that we could get back north without having to go through it, and got back to FSD about 08z this morning.

810 miles, a broken wind shield, no tornado, and only a few minutes of distant supercell structure. Sometimes, the chasing life sucks.

The main thing that killed us yesterday was just how tight the temp gradient on the WF was, and how narrow the region for good storms was. Within 50 miles we went from elevated storms with ground-scraping LCLs to bases too high and mixed out. Pretty frustrating considering the potential, but it was a fun day out of the office and good nowcasting experience if nothing else.

Ok, now it's picture time:

 

[Dan Robinson]

Just a writeup for now with a few images. I have a lot of material to go through, and not much time to do it, now that my Plains season is over and I'm back into full-time work mode.

All along, I had planned to choose a secondary target for this day due to chaser traffic. By Monday night's 00z data, it appeared this would be in northwest Missouri, where models showed a few storms going up on the warm front in an environment with adequate instability and upper support. A good right mover might have even taken me back close to home.

I left home at 9PM Monday and arrived at Rockport, MO for the night. I was not 100% committed to my target, and wanted to allow enough time to bail to the primary if needed. Eventually, short term models started backing off of storms firing in my target area, with several discrete supercells indicated in central Nebraska. Everyone else saw these model images, so I won't rehash it. Anyway, that caused me to bite on the primary target and continue west into central NE.

I ended up with everyone else at Ansley, and my story is similar from that point until the Lincoln area. I watched in dismay as a beefy supercell went up in my original target area in NW MO and apparently produced at least one tornado according to a video posted to Twitter . At Ansley, a huge horseshoe funnel testified to the low-level wind environment in place:



The cap killed off the target convection near North Platte, so I jumped on the storm coming southeast from Ord. I caught it near Clarks and stayed ahead of it all the way to Lincoln. The storm's fast speed meant there was no way to get up into the notch and stay with it safely, so I didn't try. I saw a tight but weak gustnado at close range in Osceola. Southeast of there, the gust front raced far ahead of the precip cores and appeared to be slowing. For a brief time it looked like new updrafts were beginning to go up ahead of the storm, as the character of the clouds changed from the typical whale's mouth to more flat bases. Looking back now, I think this was just wishful thinking. Near Friendship, a large and dense dirt plume rose up from the ground, with clear cyclonic rotation (front portion going south, back portion going north).



This looked tornadic at first, but I think it was more likely on the western edge of an intense outflow surge curling around. At best it may have been a very large gustnado. I did see it show up as a tornado report at the time. The entire dirt plume rapidly began surging south soon after, which rose all the way to cloud base and was impressive to watch.



I dove down to I-80 to Lincoln, stopping briefly to get a shot of the storm over the city.



There were some cool rotating eddies under the leading edge of the shelf cloud. I stayed due south of the storm until Nebraska City, when a strong couplet began showing on radar. I pulled ahead of the storm to get a better look into the notch, and saw this. As usual, the camera's contrast is better than what I saw visually. In typical 2014 fashion, I wasn't confident enough of this feature to call it in. I witnessed no power flashes nor any other definitive signs:



I watched the storm move over Nebraska City, then took refuge at a gas station as the hail moved over (I had to stop as I was almost out of fuel). I jumped south into Kansas to catch the next supercell in the line, battling precip the whole way. I intercepted this second storm at Hiawatha, and stayed with it all the way to Arkansas City. It also developed several strong couplets and was tornado warned, but I never saw anything as it was apparently buried deep in the rain.

Up until Hiawatha, the lightning from these storms had been virtually non-existent all day. I hadn't seen a visible channel of lightning yet, but that changed - the storm at Hiawatha was going absolutely nuts with lightning. Constant 'anvil zits' in the high parts of the storm, continuous thunder, and a barrage of CGs every couple of seconds out ahead. I captured several dozen handheld stills of bolts from inside the car, not feeling safe enough to go outside with the tripod. At Atchison, two back-to-back close strikes hit in front of me which I captured through the windshield. Unfortunately the misting rain and windshield wipers ruined these, but they're still interesting to look at. One channel of the second strike here hit the power lines along the road.





I drove all the way back to St. Louis, wanting to get home ahead of the storms for two reasons: I didn't want to drive all the way back in heavy rain, and two, I didn't want to miss the storms coming through my home area. I arrived home at 5AM, and seeing the line was a big mess of heavy rain and diminishing lightning, just went to bed and let the line roll over me in my sleep.

The lesson from the the day is, once again, to stick with your target. I'm OK with what I saw, but would have loved to have been on that lone storm in NW MO that no one else got. Certainly would have been nice to have less than half of the miles and gas expense for the day!

 

[edward oneal]

Did not chase Nebraska, but did go after storms near Garden City KS, did not see the reported Tornado. But got under the storm as it got over Garden City had great structure here is link to pictures. https://www.flickr.com/photos/27494159@N04/sets/72157645036594385/

 

[Chad Alcares]

Spent the afternoon in Lincoln Nebraska (home) watching agitated CU after agitated CU try and initiate along the outflow/warm front boundary put down by early morning convection. You could see with each tower how incredible the low level and mid level shear was.. too much in fact for the slight amount of convergence/lift going on at the surface as after ten minutes the tops of the towers were pulled from their updraft bases. It's an interesting process to witness. Watched one of the agitated cu push north north north... until finally it hit the outflow boundary from the storm that passed through Blair Nebraska - north of Wahoo - then this tower went ballistic - instead of being seriously tilted it went straight up. Knew then I had to go that way. Shot north of Wahoo then east towards West Omaha and realized that all of this was occurring north of the original outflow boundary from the morning storm and that nothing around here had a chance to be surface based. I then went west on 92 past Wahoo aiming for David City to see the storm rolling in from the west from a distance. I got close to this storm right as it started to race an insane gust front on its southern flank. Inflow at the surface and above me 25 to 35 mph into the front - I kept moving south until I got out of that inflow. Turned on a dirt road - filmed from a dash cam towards the west from the northern part of Seward County. This area was well south of the precipitation core - but I wasn't planning on dealing with the winds that this could bring. The interesting part of this area was it was right at the boundary of cool outflow air from the storm before (70 to 74 degrees) and unturned moist air at about 85 degrees - so this piece was riding that boundary. Headed to Seward then watched this gust out towards north of Lincoln. Then went home to watch the rest of the storms move into Lincoln from the porch.

I think the early morning storms pushing the original boundary south - and then the Insane Blair storm pushing an even stronger outflow boundary south kept a lot of storms from reaching full potential that day. Hard to forecast what those individual storm boundaries from the day of will do...

http://youtu.be/QlQRRxST0L0

 

[joel ewing]

Just for the record, my chase partner Doren Berge and I must have been immediately behind YOU guys as we came up on the overturned truck and trailer from the west. We had a new candy-apple red Buick SUV rental with Kentucky plates. We pulled sideways, and I asked the gal who drove the overturned vehicle if they needed anything....like some of our sweaters and sweatshirts (it was getting cold and SOOO windy) or bandages / wraps. She was completely cool and said they were fine. I didn't think she would turn away the sweaters, but what can you do? So anyhow, I just wanted to comment as to who we were.

 

[JamesCaruso]

@Daniel, thanks for circling back w/ your post re: the overturned trailer. Just wondering if you actually saw it occur, or if you happened upon it later, because I was curious as to whether it was actually the wind that flipped it or if something else happened... Or maybe you had occasion to talk to them about it...

Thanks,
Jim

 

[Skip Talbot]

Brindley and I expected warm sector initiation south of the boundary near Broken Bow, and we had it. The cap won though, and those few updrafts went orphan anvil almost immediately after initiation. So we went north of the boundary toward that HP mess tracking toward Ord. We bailed on the storm almost as soon as we got on it. I was hoping it would turn more right, or pull the boundary north, but it was pretty apparent there was never going to be much of a camera worthy shot at a tornado on that storm. Really dramatic gustnadoes and outflow as noted above though and I believe that was a source for at least some of the tornado reports that were coming in on that storm.

We ran back west toward Lexington for prettier storms, even if they had less of a chance of producing a tornado. We caught another dramatic gust front with a massive wall of dust blowing across the road, and then got some golfball hail out of Tail End Charlie down in the sandhills, and finally a beautiful sunset over Lexington.

Hoped for more of a tornado play out of this, but we tried to make the most of it.

Watch video >

 

[Ryan Pfeifer]

Wasn't sure if I was going to chase or not, but then I saw the day's initial storm was going to come by north Omaha and looked pretty strong, so I figured I'd catch the storm outside of town and then see what there was to head towards with the initiation underway on the warm front. In general, just needed to leave sooner, but also got caught in the worst rush hour traffic in Omaha. I guess businesses were letting people go home early or something. First good look I had at the storm I was stuck in traffic at the top of a hill around 4pm, and it looked like it had had an extensive wall cloud that had just begun to dissipate. Given that and 4+ inch hail it produced, I was really hoping someone was on it and would have a report to post here. I eventually headed west and got on the gustnados of the Ord storm when it was near Columbus, which was kinda fun, and also got some golf ball+ size hail on I-80 between Omaha and Lincoln from that storm eventually. However, I regret not getting on the storm north of Omaha sooner.

 

[Winston Wells]

I also chased central Nebraska and the Ord supercell. After overnighting in Kearney, I moved north to Loup City just prior to noon. I waited at the municipal airport just north of town for a couple of hours with visions of discrete classic supercells dancing in my head from the midday runs of the HRRR, only to be dismayed by the messy line of convection that initiated along the warm front to my north. As the Ord storm began to gradually emerge from this line, I repositioned a bit further north to the intersection of NE-58 and NE-70, hoping that the tops that had emerged back to the southwest of Broken Bow would intensify instead. But it was not to be, so once the Ord cell became TOR-warned, off I went. I headed northwest out of Ord on NE-11 as the storm was approaching Elyria, and boy did the sky look ominous! Two sheriff deputies had set up a quasi-roadblock just south of Elyria, and they asked me for a look at the radar. I was happy to oblige, and we agreed that while it appeared that the center of circulation would probably pass just to the northeast, it would be smarter to move back south into Ord.

From there I began stair-stepping to the south and east with everyone else in hopes of getting back in front of the storm. It was not to be. As others have noted, I too badly underestimated the speed of the cell's movement to the southeast, and, given the limited number of good road options, this forced me into a long, futile chase on NE-22, U.S. 281, and NE-92. I played things pretty conservatively - instead of heading east on NE-22 toward Fullerton, for example, I headed further south to St. Paul before blasting back east on NE-92 - so I only got nicked by the storm's RFD a couple of times early on. I did see lots of dust clouds and gustnadoes being kicked up from the storm's outflow, but I never saw anything that remotely looked tornadic. Here's one shot of the storm that I took from the long eastward stretch of NE-92 between St. Paul and Osceola. The view is to the northeast:

I finally let the cell go as it passed north of Osceola and headed south on U.S. 81 to York for a quick dinner. I hadn't kept a good eye on the other areas of convection that had been firing back to the northwest, so I was initially surprised to see a promising SVR-warned cell passing just north of Grand Island. So, before heading home, I decided to hop west a few exits on I-80 and intercept this storm, which was by now approaching Aurora with the following radar signature:

I got off at the Hampton exit, where I was treated to a long, linear, three-tiered cell approaching from the northwest. Here are a couple of stills I shot from the offramp. Both look west.

And here's a bit of 4x video of the gust front as it approached my position:



As it overtook me I blasted back east on I-80 and then dived south on U.S. 81. I had to go all the way down to U.S 6 and Fairmont before getting out of storm's way (I believe that this was the cell that several hours later produced the Bern, KS tornado). I then headed east and south back to Illinois, traveling for several hours sandwiched between yet another line of storms to my northwest and the still somewhat more discrete cells to my southeast. Both lines were really electrified, and I had a great, nonstop lightning show in front of me for nearly four hours straight.

 

[Royce Sheibal]

I'll try and post my pictures later once I find where I put my camera. Was chasing the tor warned storm near ord as it got into polk county. Sadly it gusted out just as we got close. However we did get pelted by a 'corn-nado'? The fields nearby were still covered in last year's harvest leftover, and the gustnado that resulted picked up a ton of corn stalks. I had never been in a full on dust storm before so this was a 1st for me. My driver was not happy at having to drive through literal walls of brown doom crossing the roads at 70mph+ for a good 20 minutes.

 

[Dave C]

I based out of Lexington morning of, and waited in Columbus until afternoon to see what storms would do. Like most everyone else I was disappointed to see storms would not remain isolated. The only tornado warns were for the HP monster surging east at 45+ knots. I initially thought I might approach from the south to have a quick look at the cell that left Ord - which I cautiously did. However, I ended up shaving my margin too thin and got stuck in road construction with a delay and pilot car setup on a one lane highway. This mistake, and missing a couple radar frames, put me in harms way as the storm continued to advance ESE and build itself to the south. No matter how hard I tried, with that road network and the incredible storm speed, I was going to get cored - something I have always been careful to avoid. By clever navigation I was able to avoid the worst of it, but was still pelted with enough large stones to cause considerable damage to my vehicle. This was a hard learned lesson. I was frustrated with the season and storms that day, and let it affect my judgement. I should have headed home as soon as storms formed a squall. This is the first time in my four years chasing I have made such a mistake and I hope it is my last. Pictures to follow if I can find any that are decent in that mess.

 

[StephenHenry]

Finally catching up with a report after a busy month. Our first ever chase in Nebraska turned out pretty fun but also pretty hairy. We started out in Kearney and headed north mid-morning to Broken Bow. Sat in the Prairie Grounds coffee shop for several hours and learned a lot about the town just by overhearing locals' conversations. As the afternoon wore on I got antsy, and when echos finally started showing up north and east of town, we took off. I felt like we were pretty on the ball initially, as we got to Ord with about 20 spare minutes to capture timelapse. Feelings deflated though as a monster HP supercell with low contrast emerged from the haze. We decided to give the storm a pretty wide berth, and abandoned our position near Ord just as the first cold outflow gusts hit. What followed was an increasingly white-knuckled chase as we stair-stepped SE along the major roads just ahead of the RFD gust front. Roads became more and more crowded but everyone was very courteous and I never witnessed any dangerous behavior. Unfortunately, the fast storm motion gave scant few opportunities to pull over for more deliberate footage. In Fullerton, just minutes ahead of the crashing gust front, it was fun to see the chaser train self-sort into the bold (i.e. turning north for a shot at the notch) and the scared (i.e. us turning south to stay clear). I'd say chasers were about 50/50 that day South of Fullerton we saw some really incredible gustnadoes and one of the densest fetches of RFD-driven dust I've ever seen (5-foot visibility at one point). After that, we needed to catch our breath so we sat just outside Central City for a while to look at our options. A new line was quickly congealing to our west and it looked like there were embedded inflow notches. We watched these pass over just south of St. Paul. The underside of this storm's shelf cloud was literally the blackest I have ever seen a sky get. We ended the evening watching a tornado warned storm north of Grand Island as lightning flashes lit the impressive structure. We were lulled to sleep in Grand Island by many more hours of rain and thunder as training storms continued late into the night. Like many others, I had hoped for photogenic tornadoes, but all in all it was still a rewarding day.

Watch video >

 

[Joe Pudlik]

Ended up on the Ord-Lincoln/Wahoo, NE tor warned supercell. Sat in the bears cage most of the time, as we stair-stepped southeast with the storm. Had several bouts of severe hail and gustnadoes.

http://www.turbulentstorm.com/blog/june-3rd-2014-e-c-nebraska-chase

 

[Skip Talbot]

Finally have a full account for this chase including photos, video, annotated map, and stats:
http://skip.cc/chase/140603/

Photography courtesy Jennifer Brindley Ubl