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2018-06-01 Reports: NE/SD/ND/WY
- Thread starter Greg Ansel
- Start date
James Wilson
EF5
I was stuck in the rain right behind that tornado Greg so JUST missed it. GREAT CATCH though.
Here is a video of it trying early by Valentine Nebraska ... This did not work so go to my facebook.com/nmjameswilson to see it
It had a few moments where it was at least pretty.
It tried again later but again battled the cap
I have attached some lightning shots as that was about all that touched the ground for me. LOL!
Here is a video of it trying early by Valentine Nebraska ... This did not work so go to my facebook.com/nmjameswilson to see it
It had a few moments where it was at least pretty.
It tried again later but again battled the cap
I have attached some lightning shots as that was about all that touched the ground for me. LOL!
Attachments
TrumanBoyer
EF2
Dropping a line from a public library so I have to be brief...
Left Maryland 2 days before with first target of Grand Island.
Drove straight into an HP monster near Atkinson, the only way to get to the backside of the line.
Had to hunker down under trees for approx 30 minutes. Flooded road, minor but heavy hail, fog.
Came out near Long Pine, to see some of the most gorgeous mammatus I have ever seen.
I may have seen "better", but nothing this LOW. Some probably less than 1000'.
Headed south on 183 to observe,
and intercept storms developed to south and west while I was pinned down.
Scored possible tornado from a very high bluff near Taylor, looking in general direction of Ord.
There was a lowering definitely looked like a wall cloud. Shallow angled cone emerged, touched
ground, and dissipated like a fragmented funnel when its undercut by cold air.
Zoom on phone camera was best I could get.
There was also a report of a praire fire started by lightning, but this did not look like smoke.
"Wall cloud" say's this is not a smoke-nado.
More pix to follow, I can't seem to organize a "mass upload" on this PC...
Left Maryland 2 days before with first target of Grand Island.
Drove straight into an HP monster near Atkinson, the only way to get to the backside of the line.
Had to hunker down under trees for approx 30 minutes. Flooded road, minor but heavy hail, fog.
Came out near Long Pine, to see some of the most gorgeous mammatus I have ever seen.
I may have seen "better", but nothing this LOW. Some probably less than 1000'.
Headed south on 183 to observe,
and intercept storms developed to south and west while I was pinned down.
Scored possible tornado from a very high bluff near Taylor, looking in general direction of Ord.
There was a lowering definitely looked like a wall cloud. Shallow angled cone emerged, touched
ground, and dissipated like a fragmented funnel when its undercut by cold air.
Zoom on phone camera was best I could get.
There was also a report of a praire fire started by lightning, but this did not look like smoke.
"Wall cloud" say's this is not a smoke-nado.
More pix to follow, I can't seem to organize a "mass upload" on this PC...
Attachments
TrumanBoyer
EF2
TrumanBoyer
EF2
Mike DeLange
EF0
Given it's been a bit of an anemic severe season, here comes the pent up story telling
I began my chase leaving Omaha in the early afternoon to position near the Taylor, Nebraska area. As expected, a cluster of storms initiated near the Valentine area by mid-afternoon, a Tornado watch soon followed which covered a large area of central Nebraska from north-to-south. Though temping at times chase near Ainsworth, I stayed south to ready for tail-end Charlie initiation as this seemed the best and only play. Later in the afternoon, a gaggle of chasers convened at the Sinclair station in Taylor and around 5PM initiation near the area began, which called forth the droves of chasers a few miles south to engage. The cell of interest quickly sprang to life, was isolated and seemed to be worthy of attention; however, with 14c temps at 700mb, the cap was holding strong, the cell which generated hope and excitement slowly fizzled and was ingested by the growing MCS to the North. This was the pattern over the next couple hours and hope was slowly fading, now it was a matter of scraping something together to make for a memorable outing.
Around 8PM cells started to fire far south of chaser convergence, near McCook, cruising northeast at around 35kts. Still playing around the Taylor area, [with a convincing tone from my friend Kevin] I took a trek south and see if these isolated seeds might produce...anything. A line of chasers migrated to the south, with many splitting off to the East near an area of interest around Ord. I continued south and in nearing Westerville, it soon became apparent the storms coming from the SW would too would quickly grow upscale and merge with the ever-growing beast building to the North. Regardless, I decided to stick to the play and sit on the far SE side to see what might evolve. Shortly thereafter, I saw a tornado warning near Ord.
Though I missed the event to the North, I felt it was only a matter of time before things kicked up near my area. I stayed slightly east of the massive complex as it slugged along, soon the area near me indeed grew in strength. CG began to explode all around – the winds were ripping hard now from the SE and my anticipation grew – all the signs of a violent storm were evident. The lightning show continued to intensify on radar I noticed a small couplet on velocity near the Hazard/Ravenna area so I moved a few miles down a dark dirt road to take a look-see, stopping occasionally to catch some incredible CG strikes.
Lightning illuminated a beast of a storm with what looked like several ragged wall clouds expanding and contracting, I quickly moved to get a potential view.
Moments later, just outside of Ravenna, I saw a funnel backlight by bright white lightning and the storm went tornado-warned seconds later (though I noticed the SPC did not include this in their preliminary storm reports). Though the funnel was short lived, the storm continued to produce dozens of CG bolts over the next hour while it moved E/SE, slowing losing intensity as it neared I-80 but dumping a ton of rain all the while.
Of my three chases this year, this one felt the most satisfying...no, I didn’t get the broad daylight beautifully condensed tornado I had hoped but I also went into this chase with low expectations. Given I had opportunity to chat with other chasers, witnessed a lightning show which rivaled Coleridge, NE in 2014, and witnessing a handful of wall clouds and funnels as a grand finale, I call this one a resounding success.
Enjoy the pics and please bear in mind, I am not a photog by trade
Hope for more adventures as June rolls along!
I began my chase leaving Omaha in the early afternoon to position near the Taylor, Nebraska area. As expected, a cluster of storms initiated near the Valentine area by mid-afternoon, a Tornado watch soon followed which covered a large area of central Nebraska from north-to-south. Though temping at times chase near Ainsworth, I stayed south to ready for tail-end Charlie initiation as this seemed the best and only play. Later in the afternoon, a gaggle of chasers convened at the Sinclair station in Taylor and around 5PM initiation near the area began, which called forth the droves of chasers a few miles south to engage. The cell of interest quickly sprang to life, was isolated and seemed to be worthy of attention; however, with 14c temps at 700mb, the cap was holding strong, the cell which generated hope and excitement slowly fizzled and was ingested by the growing MCS to the North. This was the pattern over the next couple hours and hope was slowly fading, now it was a matter of scraping something together to make for a memorable outing.
Around 8PM cells started to fire far south of chaser convergence, near McCook, cruising northeast at around 35kts. Still playing around the Taylor area, [with a convincing tone from my friend Kevin] I took a trek south and see if these isolated seeds might produce...anything. A line of chasers migrated to the south, with many splitting off to the East near an area of interest around Ord. I continued south and in nearing Westerville, it soon became apparent the storms coming from the SW would too would quickly grow upscale and merge with the ever-growing beast building to the North. Regardless, I decided to stick to the play and sit on the far SE side to see what might evolve. Shortly thereafter, I saw a tornado warning near Ord.
Though I missed the event to the North, I felt it was only a matter of time before things kicked up near my area. I stayed slightly east of the massive complex as it slugged along, soon the area near me indeed grew in strength. CG began to explode all around – the winds were ripping hard now from the SE and my anticipation grew – all the signs of a violent storm were evident. The lightning show continued to intensify on radar I noticed a small couplet on velocity near the Hazard/Ravenna area so I moved a few miles down a dark dirt road to take a look-see, stopping occasionally to catch some incredible CG strikes.
Lightning illuminated a beast of a storm with what looked like several ragged wall clouds expanding and contracting, I quickly moved to get a potential view.
Moments later, just outside of Ravenna, I saw a funnel backlight by bright white lightning and the storm went tornado-warned seconds later (though I noticed the SPC did not include this in their preliminary storm reports). Though the funnel was short lived, the storm continued to produce dozens of CG bolts over the next hour while it moved E/SE, slowing losing intensity as it neared I-80 but dumping a ton of rain all the while.
Of my three chases this year, this one felt the most satisfying...no, I didn’t get the broad daylight beautifully condensed tornado I had hoped but I also went into this chase with low expectations. Given I had opportunity to chat with other chasers, witnessed a lightning show which rivaled Coleridge, NE in 2014, and witnessing a handful of wall clouds and funnels as a grand finale, I call this one a resounding success.
Enjoy the pics and please bear in mind, I am not a photog by trade
Hope for more adventures as June rolls along!
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Taylor Wright
EF2
Drove a long way for a bust for the most part but there were some great photo ops to be had if you tried hard enough. Also witnessed the funnel near Ravenna, NE. Ultimately, I think the cap was a little stronger than what was predicted down south as was evident by the 18z North Platte sounding and it ultimately won, until the LLJ kicked up a squall line along the surface trough. I had a great time however and I don't think I've ever seen so many familiar chasers on a chase.
4K timelapse below of the supercell east of Miller, NE which provided a good lightning show and some decent structure.
4K timelapse below of the supercell east of Miller, NE which provided a good lightning show and some decent structure.
First I went to north central Nebraska where storms were supposed to form first and shortly after arrival near Ainsworth, NE initiation happened about 3p. The idea today was to stay on the tail end of the storms or any discrete storms that could form. We kept dropping south as smaller individual cells would form and either become part of the growing line or would remain pretty weak and not do much.
There ended up being a cell near Broken Bow moving northeast that was quite a bit south of the line so every one(there were quite a few chasers out) made a break for that storm. It went severe warned briefly but then weakened. It was about this time where we thought about calling off the chase.
Finally though storms began to really strengthen about 7p but were almost immediately forming into a line. We found a field to watch the storms though and the lightning was becoming pretty intense and occasionally there were some areas of rotation showing up within the line as the LLJ ramped up. We had some ping pong ball hail start to fall at our location so had to bail east out ahead of the line. The lightning was still crazy and there were several strikes that were "out of the blue" way ahead of the storms that seemed to be originating in the anvil of the storm above us.
We made it to Ord about 845 and decided to grab a bit to eat before maybe seeing if there would be some decent lightning pic opportunities on the way home. We came back out to our car after stopping at the Casey's in town, and suddenly our phones go off with a tornado warning for Ord! We drove north out of town to try and get a good view and the line of storms now had a pretty pronounced lowering/wall cloud west of town. We took some pics/video and then decided to go back into town and then head southeast out of town on one of the highways. The tornado sirens finally went off in town some 8-10 minutes after the initial warning was issued.
As we were just getting outside of town, suddenly to the north side of the highway we could see a large area of swirling dust underneath a funnel. We continued to watch it as we drove on the highway(wish I would have snapped a picture of video), but soon it became wrapped in rain. I wasn't sure if anyone had called it in yet so I called 911 and we continued onto the east to get back out ahead of the line.
On the way home back to Omaha, the line of storms turned south and caught us from the north with strong winds and blowing dust. It was pretty cool to look out to the north over the fields and when the lightning would flash to our north, you could see all the dust being picked up by the wind. Would have been pretty cool/impressive to see during the day.
Cell near Taylor that went warned and then almost died
Beautiful colors on severe warned storm near Burwell, NE
Tornado warned storm near Ord, NE
There ended up being a cell near Broken Bow moving northeast that was quite a bit south of the line so every one(there were quite a few chasers out) made a break for that storm. It went severe warned briefly but then weakened. It was about this time where we thought about calling off the chase.
Finally though storms began to really strengthen about 7p but were almost immediately forming into a line. We found a field to watch the storms though and the lightning was becoming pretty intense and occasionally there were some areas of rotation showing up within the line as the LLJ ramped up. We had some ping pong ball hail start to fall at our location so had to bail east out ahead of the line. The lightning was still crazy and there were several strikes that were "out of the blue" way ahead of the storms that seemed to be originating in the anvil of the storm above us.
We made it to Ord about 845 and decided to grab a bit to eat before maybe seeing if there would be some decent lightning pic opportunities on the way home. We came back out to our car after stopping at the Casey's in town, and suddenly our phones go off with a tornado warning for Ord! We drove north out of town to try and get a good view and the line of storms now had a pretty pronounced lowering/wall cloud west of town. We took some pics/video and then decided to go back into town and then head southeast out of town on one of the highways. The tornado sirens finally went off in town some 8-10 minutes after the initial warning was issued.
As we were just getting outside of town, suddenly to the north side of the highway we could see a large area of swirling dust underneath a funnel. We continued to watch it as we drove on the highway(wish I would have snapped a picture of video), but soon it became wrapped in rain. I wasn't sure if anyone had called it in yet so I called 911 and we continued onto the east to get back out ahead of the line.
On the way home back to Omaha, the line of storms turned south and caught us from the north with strong winds and blowing dust. It was pretty cool to look out to the north over the fields and when the lightning would flash to our north, you could see all the dust being picked up by the wind. Would have been pretty cool/impressive to see during the day.
Cell near Taylor that went warned and then almost died
Beautiful colors on severe warned storm near Burwell, NE
Tornado warned storm near Ord, NE
Dan Robinson
EF5
My story is similar to those who waited for the tail-end storm to form along I-80. I started from Clinton, MO (near KC) after chasing SE MO the previous day. I had a general target of somewhere north of Kearney, to be refined throughout the day. Despite the HRRR's insistence on prefrontal convection, mesoanalysis indicated a cap of steel with 700mb temps of 14C, and the visible satellite imagery showed the cumulus field in that area was not agitating. So, I went up to Ansley and was in position to jump on the Broken Bow storm soon after it initiated. The storm never looked very good visually, with translucent updrafts and little lightning. I saw this long midlevel funnel west of Sargent, located in between the original updraft and a new one to its southwest:
Once the stronger linear development started at Burwell, I drove up to check on a lowering north of town only to discover outflow already racing far ahead. I saw and reported two-inch hail at this location. From this point, I headed southeast to stay in front of the storms. Just south of Ord, I saw the tornado warning come out and stopped to look back about 4 miles southeast of town. A kink in the line was apparent with a large and low wall cloud visible. I shot a sequence of stills here before bailing southeast to avoid being overtaken by the rapidly advancing RFD gust front. At the time, I didn't notice the cloud of dust/dirt under the very last picture I took at this location.:
After hearing the tornado reports from this and seeing other chaser photos, it is apparent that this is the same feature.
At Grand Island, radar showed that the outflow was now far ahead of the storms, effectively ending the chaseable tornado threat. An expansive trailing stratiform precip region behind the line at Lincoln would be great for upward lightning, so at midnight, I found a 1,200 foot tower east of Lincoln to camp out for a while. I witnessed over 20 hits to the tower during the over 2 and a half hours I stayed there, capturing at least a dozen on video and stills from various angles.
At one point there were two hits within seconds of each other, the first time I'd seen something like that. My favorite from this was setting up next to the tower base and shooting nearly straight up, though it was impossible to keep the lenses raindrop free here:
I ended the chase at 4AM at my hotel in Nebraska City.
Once the stronger linear development started at Burwell, I drove up to check on a lowering north of town only to discover outflow already racing far ahead. I saw and reported two-inch hail at this location. From this point, I headed southeast to stay in front of the storms. Just south of Ord, I saw the tornado warning come out and stopped to look back about 4 miles southeast of town. A kink in the line was apparent with a large and low wall cloud visible. I shot a sequence of stills here before bailing southeast to avoid being overtaken by the rapidly advancing RFD gust front. At the time, I didn't notice the cloud of dust/dirt under the very last picture I took at this location.:
After hearing the tornado reports from this and seeing other chaser photos, it is apparent that this is the same feature.
At Grand Island, radar showed that the outflow was now far ahead of the storms, effectively ending the chaseable tornado threat. An expansive trailing stratiform precip region behind the line at Lincoln would be great for upward lightning, so at midnight, I found a 1,200 foot tower east of Lincoln to camp out for a while. I witnessed over 20 hits to the tower during the over 2 and a half hours I stayed there, capturing at least a dozen on video and stills from various angles.
At one point there were two hits within seconds of each other, the first time I'd seen something like that. My favorite from this was setting up next to the tower base and shooting nearly straight up, though it was impossible to keep the lenses raindrop free here:
I ended the chase at 4AM at my hotel in Nebraska City.
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JamesCaruso
Staff member
Catching up on the last of my chase reports for my 2018 chase vacation. Not much to show for today, and not much to add beyond what others have said. Obviously it was a disappointing day where the ingredients simply did not come together in the expected recipe.
We had driven north to Valentine NE the night before to hedge our bets between a more northern target (such as the Dakotas, but SD ended up not looking too good and we were not inclined to go all the way to ND), and a Nebraska target, knowing that we might have to backtrack for a more southern target. Surface winds were really picking up during the late morning in Valentine, with the Sandhills sand blasting me as I took a walk in town, so we were optimistic when we departed for a general target area of Thedford to Ansley, with plans to re-evaluate en route. We ended up hanging out for the better part of the afternoon on a dirt road in Merna, just NW of Broken Bow.
We ignored the garbage going up to the north, but as we started to see some radar echos pop up to the south of that area of convection, we decided to migrate south. As others have mentioned, the HRRR had been showing isolated supercells near I-80, and while we weren’t going to position ourselves for model output we did want to avoid being caught north of a tail-end Charlie as we started to see signs of the line growing to the south.
So we dropped down to somewhere south of Ansley on 183 but the sky looked to be drying out so we backtracked north toward the disorganized cell that was heading toward Sargent. As this storm weakened, we stopped for a great photo op at this abandoned structure:
Well you all know the story from here, nothing much happened as the surviving southern cells eventually attached themselves to the existing line of storms to the north and although we hung in until close to dark, we had already bailed before the tornado report near Ord, which I believe was around 9:15pm or thereabouts. Don’t think we really missed much with that and it’s pretty hard to target potential tornados areas on a solid squall line anyway.
On the way to Broken Bow we went through another cell that I believe had a severe warning on it. We went through some pea sized hail and got a nice shot of the sun behind the back side of the storm (below) and saw a faint rainbow (not pictured).
There was some pretty good mammatus as well, and we further enjoyed the mammatus field and, after dark, near continuous lightning generated by the line of storms chugging eastward from the deck of an awesome brewpub in the middle of nowhere in Broken Bow. Just the previous night we had found another great diamond-in-the-rough microbrewery in Valentine, so there was at least some measure of success in the past 24 hours.
We had driven north to Valentine NE the night before to hedge our bets between a more northern target (such as the Dakotas, but SD ended up not looking too good and we were not inclined to go all the way to ND), and a Nebraska target, knowing that we might have to backtrack for a more southern target. Surface winds were really picking up during the late morning in Valentine, with the Sandhills sand blasting me as I took a walk in town, so we were optimistic when we departed for a general target area of Thedford to Ansley, with plans to re-evaluate en route. We ended up hanging out for the better part of the afternoon on a dirt road in Merna, just NW of Broken Bow.
We ignored the garbage going up to the north, but as we started to see some radar echos pop up to the south of that area of convection, we decided to migrate south. As others have mentioned, the HRRR had been showing isolated supercells near I-80, and while we weren’t going to position ourselves for model output we did want to avoid being caught north of a tail-end Charlie as we started to see signs of the line growing to the south.
So we dropped down to somewhere south of Ansley on 183 but the sky looked to be drying out so we backtracked north toward the disorganized cell that was heading toward Sargent. As this storm weakened, we stopped for a great photo op at this abandoned structure:
Well you all know the story from here, nothing much happened as the surviving southern cells eventually attached themselves to the existing line of storms to the north and although we hung in until close to dark, we had already bailed before the tornado report near Ord, which I believe was around 9:15pm or thereabouts. Don’t think we really missed much with that and it’s pretty hard to target potential tornados areas on a solid squall line anyway.
On the way to Broken Bow we went through another cell that I believe had a severe warning on it. We went through some pea sized hail and got a nice shot of the sun behind the back side of the storm (below) and saw a faint rainbow (not pictured).
There was some pretty good mammatus as well, and we further enjoyed the mammatus field and, after dark, near continuous lightning generated by the line of storms chugging eastward from the deck of an awesome brewpub in the middle of nowhere in Broken Bow. Just the previous night we had found another great diamond-in-the-rough microbrewery in Valentine, so there was at least some measure of success in the past 24 hours.
