5/20/09 REPORTS : FL/NE

[cdcollura]

Good day all,

LOL ... This is my first storm "chase" of 2009 - May 20 in FL (I was already supposed to be chasing in the US Plains)!

Chased the slight risk in southern Florida today with some funnel clouds / severe-warned storms (earlier associated with waterspouts) encountered, but not much else.

Above: Interesting little cell south of South Bay, FL in Palm Beach County (2 PM).

Above: Small (shear) funnel (just right of center of picture) on sheared updraft in western Palm Beach County, FL (2:15 PM).

Above: Multicell severe storm about the time it was producing 58 MPH (measured) winds near Belle Glade, FL (just before 2 PM).

Above: Not sure what this is (2:10 PM) looking east towards back-side of storm updraft in Palm Beach County, FL.

Conditions causing the storms were a region of convergence (surface trough axis), heading, boundary interestions, and an upper-level low pressure system.

 

[Paul Sherman]

Mods Can you add Nebraska to the Topic Title

Spent the day near to Thedford and got onto a Storm that was not up to much other than Penny Sized Hail and 50-60mpg Outflow Wind Gusts South of Thedford on Highway 83 - Fun all the same and at last something in the Ridge of Death

 

[Bill Schintler]

Chase summary, May 20

Today's chase in NE exceeded my expectations, which were low. We had targeted Hyannis, and arrived 50 miles to the west in Alliance by early afternoon. High-based storms developed in the western panhandle, and we followed the dominant storm from Alliance to Hyannis, at which time it began to ingest better moisture and started to rotate. Following route-2 east to Thedford, we saw some decent storm structure and small hail; after which both our road network and daylight ran out. I’ll get some photos up when we return home next week and fix our website.

- bill

 

[Michael Carlson]

Also chased NE Panhandle and managed some small hail and high winds, not to bad for a spot chase.

FULL CHASE ACCOUNT

 

[Colt R Forney]

Today turned out a heck of a lot better than I thought it would! Started the day off heading down from the Badlands in South Dakota after sight seeing on Tuesday and ended up talking to some friends involved in Vortex 2 in Hemingford for a couple hours waiting for stuff to fire. Dropped south to Bridgeport after first storm and ended up having to blast east on I-80 and then go north on hwy 83 from North Platte. Caught the storm just in time and saw a great storm right before sunset.

 

[Mike Krzywonski]

This was my first opportunity for storms during my '09 trip to the Plains. I had fun in Nebraska, & managed to capture a few nice photos.

 

[Christian Matthys]

We also chased the NE panhandle supercell.. It was awesome! Because of bad road network and time lag, we crossed the FFD from west to east, got into some hail and then headed south towards the wall cloud. At that time our choice was not without risk (close lightnings on a mud road near/in the bear's cage), but we couldn't resist: The updraft features were well defined and stunning. At a gas station in Thedford we decided to let the cell pass by and let the FFD again overrun us, because the organisation of the updraft/rotation seemed to weaken at that time.

If you're interested, you'll find more photos and videos in the next couple of days in our blog:
http://severestorms.wordpress.com/2009/05/21/20-mai-2009-superzellenchasing-in-nebraska/

Later on during dark we took some lightning pictures of another thunderstorm and suddenly got hit by sandy stormwinds (outflow from cold front struck us in the open field) => measured 58 mph (max.)! Nice experience, but definitely not good for the camera equipment

Christian Matthys (SevereStorms)

PS: This was our first real supercell in the USA since we went here three weeks ago to chase for storms/tornados (we only intercepted strong MCS so far) and it was a great experience! The supercells in Switzerland use to be smaller and less well defined (and above all we do not have a panhandle ;-) )..

 

[John Wetter]

For a marginal day which we all knew it would be, a nice chase. The storm took on some supercell appearance. It actually looked more classic than LP. I think the earlier storms moving through really moistened up the boundary layer.

A nice attempt at some rain as we are driving south from Valentine, NE to Thedford.

This is when the storm looked the best, around 7:48pm CDT.

A fairly outflow dominant storm now as it was gusting east of Thedford.

It tried to organize again North of Halsey, NE.

 

[Jane Herbert]

Our report from yesterday's "4 county supercell" in Nebraska...fabulous structure also!

http://www.stormchasers.au.com/usa200509.htm

 

[Christian Matthys]

Hi Jane, very interesting report (and pics) of your chase! The brief funnel which you describe, at which time was that? We saw the following cloud formation (lasting only a few seconds) @ 7.48 pm CDT:

Christian Matthys

 

[Mark Blue]

We took a look at the storm mentioned above when it was moving south of Alliance, then decided to head north to look at some storms further north by Chadron. I wish now we would have followed the Alliance storm to the east, but we went elsewhere. This was a picture we took of a storm west of Chadron a few miles. When we arrived back at the motel and I saw the storm on GRL3 when it was west of Mullen it looked more robust than it had earlier. Oh well, tomorrow is another day and another chase opportunity.

 

[Matt Hughes]

We chased the setup with Vortex 2 and just as they were calling it a day a storm north of Alliance, NE formed a nice wall cloud with some rotation but the air at the surface was too cool and stable for a tornado. The interesting thing about this storm is that it was post-frontal and must have crossed a remnant boundry from earlier storms to give it the spin.

 

[Vicky Redwood]

I chased with Mike K so won't post duplicate pictures of the storm that moved east of Alliance. This was taken south of Hyannis, we had a good day given the limitations.

 

[Dean Baron]

Oh man, 1374 miles. Here's a couple pics from the day. The first storm we got was north of O'Neil, NE and was the storm with the rotating updraft in the northeast part of the storm.
Here's a couple pics, will have more on my blog later today:
Nice, crisp Cu starting to go up to our south:

The rotating updraft:

There was some sort of boundary just to our east that caused every storm that hit it to fall apart, so this updraft didnt last long. Good thing we got on it when we did.
Cropped photo of a wall cloud farther south (about 12 miles east of North Platte?). Couldn't tell for sure but there were some danglies but being so far away and all the hills between us and it I wont say much. We did run it to a tour group who was on the paved road right next to the wall cloud and they thought they saw a funnel.

Like I said I'll get more pics on my blog later and post the link here.

Time lapse of the rotating updraft in Holt county, NE

EDIT: CLICK HERE TO SEE BLOG WITH FULL ACCOUNT

 

[Dennis Oswald]

Here are some shots from Nebraska:

_DSC9040 von Dennis Oswald - Album.de

Unbenanntes_Panorama2 von Dennis Oswald - Album.de