6/06/2009 REPORTS: SW Nebraska

[Matthew Crowther]

Had a fantastic day photographing two awesome LP supercells in the area near Ogallala. Incredible structure and no other chasers to speak of.

 

[Mike Umscheid]

I knew all along that western Nebraska/adjacent far northeast Colorado had a potential play on June 6th, which is why my chase partner Robin Lorenson and I decided to stay in Ogallala after Friday June 5th's chase. I really didn't want to go east unless I felt it was absolutely necessary (i.e. strong cold front with driving north winds all across the Nebraska/northeast Colorado high plains). We woke up to low stratus and low 50s dewpoints with a light east wind instead. Seeing these obs across western Nebraska in early June with strong southwest flow aloft basically told me all I needed to know. We stayed in Ogallala. It turned out to be one fine decision. Along with Matt Crowther, his chase partner Scott Bell, and Dave Blanchard, we all targeted the same storms with very nice results. Julesburg, CO area was the initiation point for all the day's show. One tactical decision I regret was sticking with the initial Ogallala supercell too long... all the way to North Platte. We suffered the consequences and missed the show that was supercell #2. Matt and company broke off earlier, which was the wise decision and he has the images as a result. Nevertheless I took full advantage of the remaining nautical/astronomical twilight to photograph supercell #3 which tracked basically over the same locations as supercell #2 that we by and large missed on our drive down back to the southwest from LBF. The Nikon D3 with my 14-24mm f/2.8 lens shined. Managed to get some beautiful structure shots with some lightning illumination against the remaining twilight. One of these images is shown below. The rest can be see on my blog. http://www.underthemeso.com/blog/?p=692

 

[Marc Remillard]

Nothing like this storm here, but we chased a cold core setup this day near Quebec City (Canada). That wasn't too bad.