6/1/09 REPORTS: KS/NE/MO/IA/IL/IN

[Chad Cowan]

Pretty much what I expected today, a lot of convection and a lot of outflow. I got to St. Joseph and headed west on hwy 36 targeting the storm that ended up near Falls City, NE. The first core was high based and outflowish by the time I got to it. The second core to the west kept back building and showing some mid-level rotation so I skirted the core on my way west to the new updraft base. As I got there it shriveled up and gusted out, right about the time the storm 30 miles to the east went Tor-warned. Tried to catch up to it but it also weakened quickly so I called it a day.

 

[Daniel Christianson]

Well better then lastnight's chase, played with the stuff down south near Tecumseh NE for awhile, i mean not much for 10% wow but too me the heavy rain that pulls in the clouds towards the base of the storm is worth it, lightning as well. Encountered some pea sized hail from that storm then went south on Hwy 50 to go East on Hwy 8 and ended the chase outside of Pawnee City NE at an old airport. Couple of pics later.

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

It was nice to at least have strong convection for once, I forgot what its like to be under a strong updraft and hear nothing but that constant rumble; now if we could only get stout updrafts like that in an atmosphere conducive for supercells.

I should be out shooting some of this lightning, but really don't have the patience for that. Here's some photos of the storms

others on my site, most are from today, but a couple are from yesterday.... http://www.severechase.com/6.1.09.html

 

[Adam Lucio]

Chose the IL target since I did not deem the conditional threat for tornadoes to be worth the resources for me to get out there. Set off for Monmouth, IL around 1pm, intercepted first storm of the day near Little York, GR3 greatly was over estimating hail size today, storm showed 3" hail but only encountered nickels [lots of them though.]

Storms began training so I drifted south a few miles to Monmouth where I sat under a Caseys eating a slice of pizza, while doing so a storm strengthened rapidly and produced a downburst of some sort because the awning of the gas station was rocking back and forth and I thought at one point it was going to come down on me, noted several trees down as well as streets littered with branches, leaves, and garbage cans/small debris, there was also a monsoon of rain and what looked like hail up to quarter size bouncing out of the grass but I didnt get an exact measurement. Might make some good video.

Decided to take the long way home...74 to 55 and mess with the severe warned storms around Peoria, lots of intense CG lightning but not much else. Drove home and watched amazing displays of anvil crawlers lasting over an hour.

EDIT: Full log is now up at my site. Link below.

Considering the low expectations today was a really fun chase. Got to sample several severe storms although as the pictures show...there wasn't much to look at in the way of structure.

As always, full log will be up in a day or 2.

A Warren county sheriff also pulled up behind me with his lights on as I was submitting a report via SN about hail. He then rolled up next to me as we were both getting cored and I shouted I was reporting to the NWS and I didnt need help and he shouted "ok good job" and drove away.

EDIT: Full log is now up at my site. Link below.

 

[Joe beier]

Didn't really go far because I had just gotten off of work but snapped a few.

When I was getting gas these garbage cans literally just scooted out in front of me. When the guy working came out to move em he said they were too heavy rofl

Went home and sat in the garage for the lightning shots because of the rain.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Probably about the most annoying chase I've had in a while. I was having a complete data meltdown for the entire day and only had a couple glimpses at radar on the road when I stopped for lunch in Ottumwa. After finally deciding to blast back into Illinois for the local stuff I ended the day with a bang. Literally.

EDIT: Took the car in today. Need a new rim and two new tires. A $600 bonus fee for chasing garbage.

 

[Rick Schmidt]

Here is a shot of a brief wall cloud that I took Monday at 5:30 in northern Washington Co., Ks. Vortex 2 was also in the vicinity. (I wasn't following them....I think they were following me).

 

[Michael Carlson]

Tornadic Supercell just north of Oberlin Kans.

PHOTOS VIDEO CHASE REPORT

 

[Scott Hammel]

We started in Denver initially targeting Kearney, NE but ended up heading south of there through Holdredge and then east to Red Cloud where we intercepted our first storm. Caught a few gustnadoes before getting hit with rain and 60mph winds. Then on our way home we dropped south into Kansas and came across a supercell just east of Colby. Shot some lightning footage and kept pressing on. I had shut off GR3 a few hours beforehand not anticipating any more severe weather on the way home. As we lost complete visibility and had to pull over I got GR3 back up and going and the first scan showed us in a tornado warned area with a few TVS markers basically surrounding our GPS plot. That completely caught me off guard and was actually quite dangerous. I should've got GR3 and everything up and running again before we even thought about driving into it which was a huge mistake on my part. Anyway, we made it in to Colby and then made it home back to Denver around 2AM. Great day for us! Full report, pics and video can be seen on my blog...

 

[Jesse Risley]

Ryan Wichman and I intercepted the SVR warned cell near Trenton, MO. This storm produced some decent structure, including a well-defined lowering for about 5-10 minutes, which exhibited some weak rotation. We also encountered several bouts of nickle sized hail, and plenty of flash flooding in the Kirksville area.

 

[jshields]

i was initially pretty excited about this day, but alas once again the winds failed us! i still went out since i already had the day off. i left omaha around 230 with a plan of heading south of lincoln. storms were exploding already further southeast and backbuilding to the west along the ne/ks border. i had hoped to catch something a little more by itself. i ended up heading back east towards tecumseh nebraska where i intercepted a storm that was warned for a while but weakened by the time i got to it. i did see a pretty interesting lowering for a while but didn't look to be rotating from my vantage point. i saw the storms really get going back to the southwest by red cloud, but had to start heading back home. on the way home up hwy 75 i passed a storm that was already to the east of me just southeast of nebraska city. this was also pretty impressive looking and had nice lowering as well. i also saw one of the coolest looking "condensing updrafts"(for lack of a better term) that i have seen in a long while. there was a fairly narrow column where apparently the air was rising very rapidly and clouds were forming right out of thin air fairly close to the ground and rapidly rising upward and growing towards the base of the storm. this lasted about a minute or so before it died out. i talked to a nice farmer and his son while i was stopped to take some pics of this last storm, and then headed home.