Quincy Vagell
EF4
I started the day in Ogallala, NE, planning to hang tight and wait for the afternoon to start unfolding. First thing in the morning, I assessed the setup and was fairly certain that I favored the southern target (far northeastern Colorado) over the western portion of the Nebraska panhandle. Even though this would mean patiently waiting while storms developed in southeastern Wyoming, I pretty much kept with the plan. I hung around Lake McConaughy and got some sun while I reviewed data.
Around 3 p.m. MDT, a pair of cells started to organize in northeastern Colorado, so I made my way west to take a closer look. To make a long story short, I kept contemplating between the dominant cell in Colorado and another storm that went up just over the Nebraska border. As the Nebraska storm, near I-80, just northwest of Julesburg, began to look more impressive, I approached the storm. Even when I was pretty close, I could barely make out a base and the scene was very grungy. After reviewing radar and satellite imagery, I was fairly sure that outflow was going to eventually lead to a big mess in the vicinity of the storm, so I darted back south to the Colorado cell that was pulsing up again.
I let the storm pass over U.S. 385, as I wanted to avoid the hail core. From the northern fringe of the storm, I did encounter some relatively soft hail. The hail was generally dime to penny-sized, but a few larger pieces fell and splattered on my windshield. Anyway, the plan was the let the storm pass by to the east and I could dart south, following the storm from west to east on SR-23.
I knew from the start that the southern target would be iffy. Not only would storms fire later, but there were concerns about how robust or long-lived the storms might become. To this point, multiple cells fired between eastern Colorado and the southern portion of the Nebraska panhandle, but they tended to weaken relatively quickly. This storm was what I would consider a transient supercell, initially, but as it passed into southwestern Nebraska, where boundary layer moisture was better, it started to wrap up.
![180510a.jpg 180510a.jpg](https://stormtrack.org/data/attachments/33/33708-d105a15546ca9f448748f3b4e1ca2209.jpg)
The storm moved to the east relatively slowly and although there was clear mid-level rotation, that rotation struggled to find its way closer to the ground. Nonetheless, I followed the storm for quite a while and snapped off several pictures. I had a tough time deciding which ones I liked best, so I've included a few.
![180510b.jpg 180510b.jpg](https://stormtrack.org/data/attachments/33/33709-04826b6eca279b0274b1e5247d2d7929.jpg)
![180510c.jpg 180510c.jpg](https://stormtrack.org/data/attachments/33/33710-df212c95da3ec357b1b7ee8529d8f926.jpg)
![180510d.jpg 180510d.jpg](https://stormtrack.org/data/attachments/33/33711-6715109dbc1a9d502e47bfa29cacf149.jpg)
South of Ogallala, the storm looked very well organized on radar, at least from the reflectivity scan from KLNX. The velocity scans, at a relatively high elevation, were not so impressive. I placed myself right in the "hook" of the storm and there wasn't even a well-defined base. There was occasional rising scud and some swirling low-level clouds, but aside from lightning, I felt the storm's visual appearance was degrading.
I momentarily dropped south, but then decided to go back east to stay with the storm, just in case something happened toward sunset with the increase of the low-level jet. Nothing really happened, but there was a brief moment (less than a minute) near Wallace that I thought I saw a ground circulation to the north. For a moment, I thought maybe it was smoke, as I had seen a fire earlier in the chase. My next reaction was that perhaps a tornado was forming, but it seemed disconnected from the base and situated too far southwest from the mesocyclone to be a tornado. I only captured one very low resolution photo before the whole thing vanished. I moved on, but later saw that there was an LSR of a landspout in the same place around the same time of my photo. The report was within three minutes of the photo, so I believe it's from the same event. I am not counting this as a tornado, but it will fall into the "probably a brief landspout" category that I keep in the back of my mind. I wasn't going to show the photo until I saw the LSR, but for the record:
![maybe_landspout.jpg maybe_landspout.jpg](https://stormtrack.org/data/attachments/33/33712-b86904cdbf167646974e8929e16ffb68.jpg)
Overall, patience paid off again, even if I did bounce between storms a little early in the chase. As my chasing career develops, I value patience more and more. I would rather wait for a more isolated storm to chase, even if the threat is fairly conditional, than to rush toward a grunge-fest. Although the northwestern storms did have some neat structure early on, I was happy with this chase. The southern tail-end Charlie storm did work out and it featured the best structure I've seen so far this year.
Around 3 p.m. MDT, a pair of cells started to organize in northeastern Colorado, so I made my way west to take a closer look. To make a long story short, I kept contemplating between the dominant cell in Colorado and another storm that went up just over the Nebraska border. As the Nebraska storm, near I-80, just northwest of Julesburg, began to look more impressive, I approached the storm. Even when I was pretty close, I could barely make out a base and the scene was very grungy. After reviewing radar and satellite imagery, I was fairly sure that outflow was going to eventually lead to a big mess in the vicinity of the storm, so I darted back south to the Colorado cell that was pulsing up again.
I knew from the start that the southern target would be iffy. Not only would storms fire later, but there were concerns about how robust or long-lived the storms might become. To this point, multiple cells fired between eastern Colorado and the southern portion of the Nebraska panhandle, but they tended to weaken relatively quickly. This storm was what I would consider a transient supercell, initially, but as it passed into southwestern Nebraska, where boundary layer moisture was better, it started to wrap up.
![180510a.jpg 180510a.jpg](https://stormtrack.org/data/attachments/33/33708-d105a15546ca9f448748f3b4e1ca2209.jpg)
The storm moved to the east relatively slowly and although there was clear mid-level rotation, that rotation struggled to find its way closer to the ground. Nonetheless, I followed the storm for quite a while and snapped off several pictures. I had a tough time deciding which ones I liked best, so I've included a few.
![180510b.jpg 180510b.jpg](https://stormtrack.org/data/attachments/33/33709-04826b6eca279b0274b1e5247d2d7929.jpg)
![180510c.jpg 180510c.jpg](https://stormtrack.org/data/attachments/33/33710-df212c95da3ec357b1b7ee8529d8f926.jpg)
![180510d.jpg 180510d.jpg](https://stormtrack.org/data/attachments/33/33711-6715109dbc1a9d502e47bfa29cacf149.jpg)
South of Ogallala, the storm looked very well organized on radar, at least from the reflectivity scan from KLNX. The velocity scans, at a relatively high elevation, were not so impressive. I placed myself right in the "hook" of the storm and there wasn't even a well-defined base. There was occasional rising scud and some swirling low-level clouds, but aside from lightning, I felt the storm's visual appearance was degrading.
I momentarily dropped south, but then decided to go back east to stay with the storm, just in case something happened toward sunset with the increase of the low-level jet. Nothing really happened, but there was a brief moment (less than a minute) near Wallace that I thought I saw a ground circulation to the north. For a moment, I thought maybe it was smoke, as I had seen a fire earlier in the chase. My next reaction was that perhaps a tornado was forming, but it seemed disconnected from the base and situated too far southwest from the mesocyclone to be a tornado. I only captured one very low resolution photo before the whole thing vanished. I moved on, but later saw that there was an LSR of a landspout in the same place around the same time of my photo. The report was within three minutes of the photo, so I believe it's from the same event. I am not counting this as a tornado, but it will fall into the "probably a brief landspout" category that I keep in the back of my mind. I wasn't going to show the photo until I saw the LSR, but for the record:
![maybe_landspout.jpg maybe_landspout.jpg](https://stormtrack.org/data/attachments/33/33712-b86904cdbf167646974e8929e16ffb68.jpg)
Overall, patience paid off again, even if I did bounce between storms a little early in the chase. As my chasing career develops, I value patience more and more. I would rather wait for a more isolated storm to chase, even if the threat is fairly conditional, than to rush toward a grunge-fest. Although the northwestern storms did have some neat structure early on, I was happy with this chase. The southern tail-end Charlie storm did work out and it featured the best structure I've seen so far this year.