Phew! What a great day for chasing, what a terrifying day for Kearney. My parents and my sister and my inlaws all live in Kearney, so watching this HP growler rumble into town was extremely distressing, to say the least.
Started out in Lincoln at around 1PM, drove west to York, NE, took a quick peek at data, and decided to move on to Grand Island. By the time I pulled off near Grand Island, it was a no brainer to keep on driving -- storms were starting to initiate near McCook, NE, the sky hadn't entirely cleared yet at GRI, the moisture tongue was entering at around Kearney, and my nowcaster, Darren Addy, thought the short fuse composite (a product KDDC offers, I think) was going bonkers for south central Nebraska/north central Kansas. So off I went. I exited at Lexington, NE to drop south on 283 to try to beat the core. Now, I'll be honest with you, I was weary of doing this -- it was going to be VERY tight beating the meso the east-west option at Elwood, let alone not getting cored. I hate core punching; but at least the updraft was visible for most of the trip south and didn't appear to be producing. I was in traffic behind Cloud 9 tours; boy, I'd say their customers got their moneys worth that day!
After a few minutes of pea to nickel hail, I popped out into the inflow. From then on it was a race to Elwood:
The updraft was floating overhead as I turned east at Elwood, and I kept getting waves of atomized rain. Took highway 30 east for a while, occasionally stopping to snap photos (they'll be on my blog in a day or two). Now highway 30 runs ESE, so eventually I had to take county road "A" north from Bertrand. From there, I worked east to the Elmcreek I-80 entrance. The problem was that by this point I was behind the meso -- directly behind the hook on radar, and I had to decide whether to punch under that thing or to just follow from behind. I went with the punching, but in retrospect, I think that if I had to do it again, I probably wouldn't have. For one thing, people on the interstate are scared crazy by storm clouds, and will go 40 mph in the hammer lane right next to a semi going 40mph in the slow lane, blocking up traffic and kicking up a mountain of spray. For another, even after I got through the precip end of the hook (which was very white knuckle driving), I instantly realized that I'd popped out into the bears cage at a pretty hairy time. I mean, I'm driving east in the inflow and thin little rain curtains are very quickly flying horizontally from southeast to northwest across I-80 a few miles ahead of me, and then curving west once they were north of me. Baaaaad vibes on that. Popping through the thing rain curtains gave a large momentary burst of wind from the south along with a massive spattering of large drops. Dark as all hell, too. Eventually, I got far enough in front of the base to look back out the window, and holy crap, was that a beautiful storm. I pulled off the I-80 exit at Kearney and snapped a few shots as the tornado sirens blared:
I didn't linger. I pulled back off onto the interstate and called my family, who lives in Kearney, and told them to head underground and not to come up until the radio told them it was safe.
I drove further down 80, tried to gas up at a stop that didn't have insta-pay credit cards, said screw it, and took off again as the core caught up. Eventually, the storm drifted north of I-80, and allowed for some excellent structure/meso shots:
Went a bit further, gassed up, and then decided to drop south a bit and head back to Kearney. It was still a beautiful storm at this point, but I had to check on the fam. The damage in Kearney was light in most areas, but occasionally heavy in others. I'll have damage shots up on my blog later this week. Some of the damage was definately tornadic; you don't get cars stacked on top of each other from straightline winds. But it was also very, very random; one house would be destroyed in an entire neighborhood, sparing all the others.
BTW, I kept bumping into the Discovery channel folk; they must truely have an armada this year, as you can't throw a stone without hitting a truck with the Project Rotate logo on it. Oh, and Sean -- your new chase vehicle is SICK:
Seriously, that thing is awesome. Doesn't seem to need roads; either; on the I-80 exit at Selton (I think), when it decided to move on, it just powered across the grass median and went on its merry way. Put a jet engine on the back of that thing and you've got the Batmobile.
Great chase, quite relieved my family rode out the storm okay.
