4/4/09 REPORTS: NE

[Michael O'Keeffe]

We just home from a long, tiring, but rewarding chase in S Nebraska! Left KC at 10am with a target of Belleville, KS. Got into Belleville and storms were already on going west of town, but they were nothing to write home about. We followed them north into Nebraska and blasted east to get back ahead of the storms stopping in Fairbury for dinner thinking the day may be over. While at Subway the radio was interrupted with a tornado warning for Clay County, we knew that was pretty far from where we were but we knew maybe the storms were beginning to get their acts together. It looked like a good storm was on going to our east near Beatrice so we blasted east on US136 through the core and got under the base as tornado warning was issued. We got onto US77 just in time to see some to see a beautiful white funnel develop due north of us and last for several minutes. It was interesting to film the funnel with people walking and riding their bikes through Beatrice (the storm was moving away from them and it was nice and sunny). Anyway it was reported to have touched down which is NO surprised to me as it was rotating like crazy and lasted quite awhile. We didn't have the best view of the ground, but we had a great view of the funnel itself so it is entirely possible. I'm gonna go ahead and count it as a tornado! The storm quickly weakened after that and we ended the chase with a nice core punch near Adams, NE where we got nickel sized hail and some strong winds.

Video of the Beatrice tornado.
http://www.motionbox.com/videos/3098d5b81e1be7c0be

 

[Daniel Christianson]

By luck got on the Beatrice NE storm, after being in KS along Hwy 36 around Marysville, heard a few siginifcant weather alerts go out for some counties in NE north. As nothing looked promising south or west (Me, Andy, and Nick blasted north on some backgroads and met a Hwy that took us into Beatrice. Had to stop as hail smaller then dimes was hitting us and slushing up like snow on my windshield. Siren then went off and a tornado warning was issued for the storm, got out of the precip and hit Hwy 77 North and watched as Michael O Keefe said mentions above, a beautiful white funnel. Couldn't see anything on the ground didn't have a clear view but god was that funnel rotating id be suprised if there wasnt a reported tornado. Saw numerous spotters/chasers perhaps on this storm or just people with cameras lol. By any means a great 2nd chase to the season.
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[Chris Hovanic]

Chased with co-worker Renee Geiser. We left Kansas City around 10:30am, made it to near KCI Airport and then experienced radiator problems with my Jeep Cherokee. Feeling unsafe venturing into a chase with a leaking radiator, we turned around, returned home, then swapped cars, opting instead for Renee's Ford Taurus.

At 12:15pm we began our second departure, reaching the target location of Marysville, KS around 3:00pm. Hung out and had lunch at Penny's Diner for about 1 hour, then decided to investigate the advancing line of at this time, weak, but semi-discrete convection along the dryline.

Began to head north on US-77 towards Beatrice, NE as one storm within the arc began to intensify. Several miles south of Beatrice we began to notice increased mid-level rotation. After entering the town limits, rotation tightened up, with extremely rapid cloud-base rotation becoming evident just north of town. One or two funnels were observed, however from our perspective, the most intense rotation occurred after the funnel had subsided. Rotation then rapidly weakened as the storm crossed the warm front north of Beatrice.

Jumped to a second storm advancing from the south, taking a track slightly east of the original storm. Radar presentations on both reflectivity and storm-relative velocity imagery improved as we approached the rear flank of the storm on Highway 4/136 east of Beatrice. A visually more impressive funnel and equally impressive cloud-base rotation rapidly developed as the storm neared Filley, NE. Several minutes later, the storm quickly weakened as it crossed the warm front, just as its predecessor had.

All in all, a very successful cold-core chase day, especially with dewpoints only managing to make it back into the middle 40s!

 

[Darren Addy]

Enjoyed the CPSWS in Lincoln today and went to one of the computer labs to check models (and enjoy a showing of Tim Marshall's 2003 chases DVD) with Ryan McGinnis. We agreed that Beatrice (or as my kids used to call it: "Beat Rice") looked like an ideal place to be. Ryan had to work but kindly offered to be my nowcaster, as I would be chasing nekkid.

Was in place in time to see precip in the distance to my SW and patiently awaited the line from a good visiblility location about 3 miles south of town on Hwy 77. Enjoyed some excellent C-C zots and was soon being pelted by nickel-sized snow balls from the sky that turned to slush upon impact. Sounded quite odd hitting the car, but harmless.

After that passed, my attention became drawn to an elevated area of obvious rotation just east of Hwy 77 and no more than a mile or two south of me. Almost immediately, I heard the tornado sirens going off in Beatrice. I let it pass and turned to follow the back end of the storm north. The motion on the backend of the storm was definitely interesting, but not terribly organized until I reached the north end of town when a white rotating funnel cloud was very obvious. It rolled in the air and pointed toward the ground at about a 45 degree angle directly over Hwy 77. It lasted for probably two or three minutes, but did not extend closer to the ground. As the storm got farther north it appeared to get "softer" and the vigorous motions on the backside lessened.

Not a lot to write home about, but the funnel cloud and the snow-hail was well worth the short trip. Thanks to Ryan for the nowcasting. I'm sure we'll get to chase together at some point this year!

 

[Brandon Ivey]

My wife and I, along with my friend Gary, chased in Nebraska today. The first storm we followed had nice rotation, but never produced anything. We documented most of this storm in Webster County, NE. After chatting with the livestock, we got east and chased the Clay County/York County storm that was tornado warned. We witnessed many areas of rotating dust with this storm. I would have to say that most were gustnadoes, but a few were tight circulations that were co-located with rotation at the cloud base above them. Too bad dewpoints weren't higher with this system.

http://thestormreport.com/blog/2009/04/april-4th-2009-nebraska-tornadoes/

 

[Chris Rice]

Wasn't really expecting to chase today, but ended up not being bad day after all. Started out heading to Marysville,KS, and watched as line of storms formed east of the low. I knew moisture was going to be an issue, but it was close so I couldn't resist. I followed a cell that had produced a decent funnel while traveling N. on 77 Hwy, and it became tornado warned, and produced a really nice funnel in Beatrice. Steve & Corey were N of me a caught debris being picked up near where funnel was sighted, so this may have well been a tornado, but from my location I couldn't say for sure. Here's a link to my dash cam video. There were at least 2 areas of rotation I saw, the other is right behind that power pole. I sped it up so you can see it better.

Click here for video!

 

[Simon Brewer]

Documented a short-lived landspout south of SR 4 near Carleton, NE on the tail-end of the flanking line of what would eventually become (30 minutes later) a tornado-warned cell southwest of York. I witnessed many gustnadoes when the cell southwest of York became tornado-warned, and a few anti-cyclonic funnels along the RFD Gustfront, but no definite tornado-circulations. A few of the gustnadoes could have been short-lived landspout tornadoes along the RFD gustfront, but can't confirm.

I was hoping for a better 'Cold-Core 500mb Closed-Low Event', but too much dry air mixed into region of moisture advection and temps much colder than -21 deg C at 500mb are needed to get decent instability with low-40's sfc dwps... ,but I got lucky and witnessed a landspout and some gustnadoes.

 

[Jesse Risley]

Ended up leaving the CPSWS early and targeting Hebron, NE. We left Hebron and went WSW to intercept the cells that were forming in N KS. After chasing crapvection for awhile, we intercepted a TOR warned cell near Sutton.

I'm currently working on editing some video from today. There were quite a few gustnado/spinups along OFBs today, and we intercepted one very brief TOR (landspout?) near Lushton that appeared beneath a well defined clound base, underneath a rather stealthy updraft that was probably right along the boundary.

 

[Steve Polley]

Targeted the area from Marysville KS to Seneca KS today. Left Cameron MO around 200PM. Arrived in Marysville around 4. We watched the storms start to fire on the dryline to our west. We then went west of town to get a better view of the storms to our SW. These storms seemed to be somewhat disorganized so we decided to head north on US 77 towards Beatrice. As we approached Beatrice, the storm was thunderstorm warned then tor warned. We then went north of Beatrice on 77 while Chris Rice stayed in town at 77 and 136 and viewed the storm to the north. We pulled off just north of town and noticed a funnel just to our east. About this time, Chris radioed to us that he was watching the funnel just to his north also. We then turned around to get a better view of the funnel when we noticed debris being lifted directly below the funnel although we didnt have a condensation funnel all the way to the ground. The ground circulation dissipated as it neared an out building near the highway. The circulation might have lasted a minute or so. This was definitely a successful chase for us as we had little hope for the system overall with such low instability to work with. I will look at the video tonight and see if I caught the ground circulation on tape.

 

[Rick Schmidt]

Here are a few pics from my chase into S NE yesterday. I caught a brief funnel east of Beatrice just before 6:00 PM. A nice, close chase for me that yielded some photogenic scenes.

 

[Derrick Herndon]

4/4/09 Reports NE

Targeted the surface low/triple point near the NE/KS border. I was with a group of students (11 of us in 4 cars) at the CPSWS. We had planned to chase if conditions would permit. I have to say I would not normally chase on a day with 45 F dewpoints but after yesterday I may change my mind. In any case we left CPSWS at 2 pm and decided to target West of Beatrice. Headed south from York down 81 and stopped at the 81/41 intersection. A significant weather alert had been issued for the cell south of Sutton and we were able to see a nice RFB on the cell. Base lowered a bit so we turned down 41 to get a closer look. Got to see a rotating wall cloud and a couple of brief funnels, the best funnel in the image below was not co-located with the wall cloud but about 1/2 mile to the West. Did not see any rotation on the ground from our vantage point. We stayed on the cell for a while but decided it would shortly go elevated so left it for the new development near Beatrice. Hit the tiny snowballs on that storm but got there too late to see anything else. (images below provided by Tyler Burg who was with us).

 

[PeteMcConnell]

Was planning on not chasing this set up although if something really interesting would occur nearby, yeah, I'd go. To push me off of my comfortable fence-sitter perch, I received a call from Eddy Weiss and the rest is history. Fueled up, checked tire pressure (which becomes very meaningful later in this story) and then went to pick up fellow Hastings chaser Jeff Crecelius. As we finished powering up xm, ham radio, camcorders, etc. We hit I80 and went to Wood River to have coffee at Eddy's, check data, etc. Jeff and I hung out at the I80 Wood River Bosselman's waiting for storms to intensify and come north into Nebraska. After an hour or so it became evident that the most intense storms were further east so that's where we went. We went east on I80 to Giltner and sat waiting in Giltner for the storm (with obvious rotation) to come our way. The area of rotation seemed to be staying to the south of highway 6 so we went to the Hastings exit, shot south on 281 and the immediately east once the NWS placed the tornado warning for Clay County. As Jeff and I became excited that maybe this wasn't going to be a bust as far as tornadoes were concerned, two things happened. First, I've got a can of Axe body spray in a box next to all of our chase gear. Something must have bumped the nozzle, so the thing starts spraying a mist that looks like smoke and it is hissing. Having a near fire a couple of years ago with smoke due to improper gauge wire, I yell unplug everything, unplug! I start unplugging everything and I'm getting ready to jump out of the van to find something to put the fire out with when I finally see the can of Axe. We laughed so hard it hurt! Back to our tornado warned Clay county storm. Focused intently on the storm, what started as a paved road, gradually turned to gravel, then to dirt, then to, well, MUD. Eddy calls just then and I told Jeff, take the call, I can't talk right now, we're in mud. We tried everything, but we got stuck. Never underestimate the power of prayer, remembering also that prayer without works is dead! We made it out! No farmer, no towing, just prayer with action. Jeff did an awesome job getting the van out! We saw the rain free base of the tornado warned cell which apparently put a tornado down, which moved northwest, south of highway 6 near Fairfield according to the Hastings NWS preliminary storm survey. I still don't know of anyone that saw a tornado there. Nice video of the Beatrice rotating funnel! that was scarily close to Beatrice. Thanks to Jeff for his great driving out of MUDPIT and thanks to Eddy for some great nowcasting.

 

[Stephen Locke]

No Drama

removed until I repair technical problem

 

[Stephen Locke]

Quick chase. Brief account. Photographs. Right here.