Evan Bookbinder
EF2
Very frustrating day yesterday, although I feel some solace by the lack of posts here. First and foremost, my thoughts and prayers go out to the boy scout group and their families. Hearing that aftermath play out live on the radio was quite heart-breaking.
Targeted Omaha trying to play the backed flow in the wake of morning MCS and moisure pooling ahead of the dryline & pre-frontal trough. Although better environment was clearly over NW IA, I wanted to leave enough time to get back to the WFO in case of local weather and the activity up there did not look like it would remain discrete, resulting in an HP mess. As for why I didn't pick the KS target -- well, that still needs some reanalysis.
The short of it, we targeted a series of line-embedded supercells from near Waterloo/Elkhorn (west side of Omaha), southward to Gretna to Louisville. I'm not exactly what people were seeing with these tornado reports, but in four separate instances we were literally right under the storm with great hilltop views, going "huh?". Hopefully some photos will surface because we saw little of interest yesterday. Every storm we impacted was clearly outflow dominant. I have hundreds of photos and several minutes of video of tendrils, petuberances, broadly rotating gust front interfaces and scud with only one decent wall cloud (early in the game at Waterloo on a 275 overpass west of Omaha ). Lightning got really amazing with the (3rd?) storm that tracked from Greenwood to Louisville along the Platte River and the green sky within was certainly depositing some huge hail.
Noticing that OAX lost their radar around quarter til 7 due to a lightning strike, we tried sending in frequent reports of air temp and the gust front location since Grand Island an Des Moines radar were overshooting the latter feature at great distance. And boy it was cold. We dropped into the mid 60s several times behind the gust front and still well ahead what appeard to be hook echos at 100+ miles from DMX/UEX radars. Some of these cells had bases of 7-10Kft later in the game, at which point we knew it was a done deal and headed home.
I realize people in Omaha and surrounding areas were certainly on edge after the other night. I think we counted that the city was under a tornado warning for something like 2.5 hours straight. Wowsers. Given the number of chasers and spotters that were running rampant, and the population density, we did find it interesting that the handful of tornado reports were both isolated and without any mention of damage or debris.
Really the most amazing part of the day was the high water. Given where water was to start the day over far NW MO/SE Nebraska (especially along the river in Nebraska City), I can only imagine that the supercell train-fest last night may have resulted in major flooding on the Nebraska side.
Congrats to the KS targeters. I know several of you provided some extremely useful information to ICT and TOP as tornadoes were headed toward Manhattan and surrounding areas. Given the typical lack of information after dark, this surely made a huge difference in getting people to safety.
Til next time,
Evan
Targeted Omaha trying to play the backed flow in the wake of morning MCS and moisure pooling ahead of the dryline & pre-frontal trough. Although better environment was clearly over NW IA, I wanted to leave enough time to get back to the WFO in case of local weather and the activity up there did not look like it would remain discrete, resulting in an HP mess. As for why I didn't pick the KS target -- well, that still needs some reanalysis.
The short of it, we targeted a series of line-embedded supercells from near Waterloo/Elkhorn (west side of Omaha), southward to Gretna to Louisville. I'm not exactly what people were seeing with these tornado reports, but in four separate instances we were literally right under the storm with great hilltop views, going "huh?". Hopefully some photos will surface because we saw little of interest yesterday. Every storm we impacted was clearly outflow dominant. I have hundreds of photos and several minutes of video of tendrils, petuberances, broadly rotating gust front interfaces and scud with only one decent wall cloud (early in the game at Waterloo on a 275 overpass west of Omaha ). Lightning got really amazing with the (3rd?) storm that tracked from Greenwood to Louisville along the Platte River and the green sky within was certainly depositing some huge hail.
Noticing that OAX lost their radar around quarter til 7 due to a lightning strike, we tried sending in frequent reports of air temp and the gust front location since Grand Island an Des Moines radar were overshooting the latter feature at great distance. And boy it was cold. We dropped into the mid 60s several times behind the gust front and still well ahead what appeard to be hook echos at 100+ miles from DMX/UEX radars. Some of these cells had bases of 7-10Kft later in the game, at which point we knew it was a done deal and headed home.
I realize people in Omaha and surrounding areas were certainly on edge after the other night. I think we counted that the city was under a tornado warning for something like 2.5 hours straight. Wowsers. Given the number of chasers and spotters that were running rampant, and the population density, we did find it interesting that the handful of tornado reports were both isolated and without any mention of damage or debris.
Really the most amazing part of the day was the high water. Given where water was to start the day over far NW MO/SE Nebraska (especially along the river in Nebraska City), I can only imagine that the supercell train-fest last night may have resulted in major flooding on the Nebraska side.
Congrats to the KS targeters. I know several of you provided some extremely useful information to ICT and TOP as tornadoes were headed toward Manhattan and surrounding areas. Given the typical lack of information after dark, this surely made a huge difference in getting people to safety.
Til next time,
Evan
