2022-06-11 Reports: KS/NE

[Matt Zumbrunn]

I want to call this a surprise as I do not believe the event that evolved was what had been expected. A weak low pressure area was located in Eastern Neb. CAPE in excess of 5000 j/Kg was in place over Eastern KS with surface temps into the 80s and 90s. A supercell developed and sustained itself for 4+ hours dropping the first tornados in SE NE. It also dropped tornadoes that affected Marysville, KS, near Blue Rapids, KS, Pottawatomie County KS, and then possibly in Manhattan KS. The storm is an anomly in that its movement was due south from its inception. I did not approach it until near dark and I kept my distance as the storm motion made me uncomfortable with my skill level. I kick myself for not leaving earlier as it looked pretty incredible on radar at times. I settled for a view of mammatus and lightning on a hilltop near dark.

I did not see this occurring. In my opinion the winds did not really support the strong supercell making it as far south as it sustained. I am guessing the extreme CAPE made up for other parameters? I'd be interested to hear others thoughts on this.

 

[James Wilson]

I left KC at 12:30 with a target of Rock Port MO. We watched the towers going up to our west so decided to get in their path early. We got to just south of Beatrice just before it went tornado warned. We watched all three cells from our position but this one coming into Beatrice had our immediate attention.

We moved out of its path and headed further south as it dumped large hail.

We stayed ahead of it with dips to the east sometimes to get a different view of it.


Once we got closer to Manhattan the storm really ramped up and gave us some amazing structure.

We had the cell directly behind us and the leading edge just hit us in town.

We managed to get ahead of it and go east on I-70 where we waited for the notch to pass for a view into the storm.

We saw possible brief spin ups but my video had a hard time focusing with all the rain between it and the area of interest. We followed it a bit longer south then called the chase. We ended the night with some mammatus and a decent sunset.

 

[James Wilson]

Here's my screenshot at 5:24pm of the 5:23 pm reported tornado near Wymore Nebraska.

 

[JeremyS]

I was pretty excited to have a local chase on a weekend, almost screwed it up, but was able to redeem myself before the evening was over.
With nothing to do, I still somehow managed to leave Omaha late as I headed down I-29 towards Nebraska City area. I kept noticing the western most cell that the 3km NAM was showing and eventually the HRRR, but most forecasted activity looked like it would be in western Iowa.
So once it became obvious that the storms south/southwest of Lincoln were going to be the storms to go for at least initially, I headed towards them. I was finally able to approach from the north on Hwy 77 north of Beatrice, as the storms had morphed into the one giant HP monster heading into Kansas.
I was mad I was this far behind and was mad that it seemed like any chance of seeing anything in this HP beast was gone. Not to mention the prospect of trying to get to the other side while it was moving away from me at 40 mph.
I was also watching the storms back to the north that had just moved through Omaha and I could tell had knocked out power to my house because my weather station was no longer online. I was also seeing video from neighbors that looked pretty bad in my neighborhood.
I had noticed the amazing structure on pretty much all the storms going up especially early in their cycle and there were now 2 cells moving south out of Omaha and towards me, so I called off the chase on the southern storm and decided I would see what these 2 cells would show me.
Boy did I make the right choice. I made it to Cook, NE and rather than continuing on north to meet it close up, I decided to stay back once I noticed how amazing the structure already was in the distance.
I was able to sit for about 20 minutes and let the storm come right at me taking pics and video. Once it was almost upon me, I bailed south towards Tecumseh to get back out ahead of it for some structure shots.
On the drive south, it became tornado warned and had a pretty decent couplet on radar. I stopped for a quick couple of phone pics at a hotel parking lot in town and then headed south of town to get further out ahead of it again.
There was nothing real close to producing, but it still had amazing structure and motion. The gust front of the storm was like a huge wave with a bit inflow tail cloud coming into it.
I went east a bit and here is where it came really close to producing a tornado with a nipple funnel forming for a short period.
The storm died pretty quickly thereafter so I made the trip home arriving shortly after 9p. The power was back on in the neighborhood, but I had quite a bit of damage in my backyard with my shed pushed off it's foundation, my gas grill flipped over and pushed about 4 feet on our patio, and I lost a section of fence.

 

[Mike Smith]

This created a dangerous situation for those attending the Symphony in the Flint Hills. Details here: Every Meteorologist's Nightmare!!

 

[Rick Schmidt]

I started out going north from Topeka, but when I saw storms maturing to the northwest, I turned west just north of the Nebraska state line. I finally caught up to the merging storms southeast of Wymore, where I took the wall cloud photos. Then I decided to go through the storm, to catch the next highway going south. By the time I got to Marysville, the now monster supercell with imbedded tornadoes was already upon the town. The screen grab apparently shows that I am damn close to, or on the edge of circulation. I did experience some wicked gusts, and for a short time, wondered if my vehicle was going to flip over. During this 5-10 minute time frame, it was almost like night, with just car and street lights on. The power flickered and then went out as well. Staying on Hwy. 36 through town, I had to have been within a minute or so of the tornado damaging the lumberyard business that was just south of the highway. The wide angle view of the storm is on I-70, looking west, when the storm was south of Manhattan. It was a very exciting chase, and not very far from home.