6/5/06 REPORTS: ND / SD / NE / MN / IA

[Rean Clover]

Admittedly I am a stay close to home kinda' gal. Generally I stay within a 5 mile radius of home because of my children. Dad drives truck. So anyway. Last night around 9ish or so I ventured outside with my son to walk to the end of our grove to take a look. The sky above us was clear, but to the NW we saw the below. We watched it for awhile, went back in to look at the radar and our best estimation is it was near Pipestone, MN about an hour north of here.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

The highlight of the chase! This was at least funny. I'm on highway 70 east of Bartlett. I pull over to shoot the cows out in the field with the "storm" in the background. This is a pretty rural highway so I parked on it for a second. I could see forever in both directions so it wasn't a big deal. A good song comes on the radio(I've since forgotten what it even was). I know these guys saw me before I do this. I crank the radio all the way up as I sit there and snap some pics. Right when I do this the whole heard comes running over. Every head comes to the fence and is staring at me with music blaring. You can tell that one with the white head is really listening.

Looking east near Pierce NE.

Sunset east of Humphrey.

A couple more here: http://www.extremeinstability.com/06-6-5.htm

Is 2006 over yet? Oh that's right, that was back in early May.

 

[Bob Schafer]

I chased around the Arapahoe/McCook area of NE yesterday. I caught several wallclouds from several different mesos that tried pretty valiantly to put a tube down. I did see what I believe was a pretty good gustnado N of US6 as I drove toward Indianola. The first pic was shot from N of Arapahoe, looking approx WNW:



(Click for larger versions)

When I arrived in Indianola, I called Goodland, and the conversation went something like this:

Me: "There's a cone descending from the mesocyclone just N of Indianola"

GLD: "What county are you in?"

Me: "Red Willow....well, now the cone is gone, but there's another w/c under the meso WNW of that one" (See next pic to see what I was seeing at that point in time)

GLD: "What's the name of that town you're in again?"

Me: "Indianola. Oops, well, now the w/c has lifted from the meso N of McCook, but there's another one dropping from this one here. Well, I better head over to McCook so I have a road south. I'll call you back if I see anything else to report..."



After arriving in McCook, I got this lightning illuminated w/c:



Then I headed S of town and snapped these pics of the mammatus at sunset:





Funny. After all the discussion in the "Extreme Photoshopping" thread, I noticed that those mammatus did NOT look anything like that, yet I was unable to remove enough of the orangish tint to those pics to make them look like they did in person without just totally ruining and washing out all the color in the pics. Yeah, I reduced much of the saturation, but those pics still appear way more orangish than the mammatus really did. Well, I don't have a very good camera nor good editing software...

Bob

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

MY report is much like Bob's above, we too Sean and Katie McMullen and myself were on the cell in between arapahoe and McCook were we meet up with Jeff as well. Upon arrival a decent wall cloud looked fairly impressive but it got cut off, the area of rotation was fun to watch as two giant bowls formed and occluded and a new area of rotation formed at which point we had renewed hope of a tornado forming, but it could never quite get it done. Upon heading home we were treated to what was the best mammutus/sunset I have ever seen.

Poor quality Video Grabs

http://s66.photobucket.com/albums/h260/dwu...nt=2678e83c.jpg

http://s66.photobucket.com/albums/h260/dwu...nt=63f224f5.jpg

http://s66.photobucket.com/albums/h260/dwu...nt=4c6074ab.jpg

http://s66.photobucket.com/albums/h260/dwu...nt=869ff2fc.jpg

http://s66.photobucket.com/albums/h260/dwu...nt=0d818349.jpg

http://s66.photobucket.com/albums/h260/dwu...nt=1fcfcda6.jpg

 

[Chris Wilburn]

Same report as most everbody else that was on the cell near McCook. I didnt make it as far north as I would like so I sat in Phillipsburg, Ks for a bit while severe warned storms fired in NW Nebraska. Decided to head a bit north into Nebraska when I saw a really nice tower go up northwest of Cambridge, but this cell quickly died and I was quickly losing hope. Sat in Cambridge for about 30 minutes hardly looking at radar the eniter time and noticed a cell looking pretty impressive on radar in Lincoln County. Golfball hail was reported but I never got hit with any as I was trying to stay clear of it and get a good look at the base of the storm. Viewed the storm for a good hour and a half.......and a few times had a really nice wall cloud. For a brief time I noticed some rotation with the wall cloud and had my hopes up that maybe it would produce, but it never did. Chased the storm as it entered Frontier County where I called the chase shortly before darkfall near McCook. I probably ran into some of you guys as I passed 4 or 5 chasers during the chase. I think I saw Cloud 9 tours pulled off to the road one time and I am also pretty sure I passed Tony Laubach while going down the road. Pretty sure it was him because I saw where he was in Phillipsburg, Ks on the now thread for yesterday. Like Dustin metnioned the lightning was absolutely stunning! It looked like bombs going off every few seconds. Also some very nice CG's as well. A few side notes on the chase. Absolutely loved chaisng this part of Nebraska. Very calm/tranquil and the rolling hills/fiels are absolutely awesome! Also have to give big props to my Cingular service via my laptop card. The cingular map shows service along I-70 in Kansas but not points north. I was getting service far north of I-70 north of Russell, Ks all the way to the Nebraska border and beyond. Would have liked to meet up with the chasers in the area, but everybody (myself included) was busy on the move. Oh well I am sure there will be other times.

 

[Scott Olson]

See report above.
Will put some video on later, here are some pics:

 

[Matthew K. Hartman]

Hello folks...

I've finally uploaded photos tonight from my chase this past Monday, June 5th.

We had several mini-supercell thunderstorms pop up over eastern portions of the state (ND) early Monday evening and since I was able to get out of work on time, I was able to get out west to intercept a tornado warned cell near Niagra, ND. Luckily, little driving was needed and I was able to simply follow the storms back eastward towards Grand Forks. No tornadoes (probably due to the lack of sufficient low-level shear), but was able to view a couple of well developed wall clouds. Both only exhibited modest rotation, at best. Was treated to a beautiful sunset to wrap up the evening, so not all bad for a last-minute, unexpected chase.

Photos can be found in the gallery:
http://photos.mhartman-wx.com
* note that the EXIF date on the photos is an hour fast. I'm not sure how the time changed on the cam, but I didn't realize it was set incorrectly. For instance, if the the EXIF date says 18:02:48, it was actually taken at 19:02:48.

I don't have the chase log finished yet, however, I intend to have it completed this evening. It should be featured here, eventually: http://www.mhartman-wx.com/mwx_chasing.html

Lastly, I've populated my event archives with all sorts of data/imagery from Monday evening. Note, however, that a majority of the products are geared towards the areas I chased and across the northern plains. In addition, I have a secondary event entry that includes a radar and satellite loop I conjured up from around the area.

The archives can be found here:
http://www.mhartman-wx.com/mwx_archives.html

Enjoy!

 

[Kurt Silvey]

I left Omaha a little after 1:00 pm and head towards O’Neil, NE to target storms as they fired along the cold front. I believed this area would offer the best chance to catch isolated cells before they could cluster or line out. I stopped to check data in Norfolk around 3:15 and saw cells were already firing in eastern Cherry County, so I continued my trek west and north to intercept. As I approached the northern cells I could see they were already raining through the core, so I dropped south on 281 to try and intercept the tail-end Charlie, which I thought might be headed into an area of higher Dp’s from the mornings rain fall, along the Loup River valley. I finally got far enough south and set up ahead of a severe warned cell just south of the Howard / Greeley County line. I setup just nw of Elba, NE and started filming as a very nice wall cloud formed just to my nw. The cell had a very nice rounded base and the wall lasted for about 15 minutes before it just fizzled away. As I decided to call it quits and head for home I dropped sw to St. Paul where I meet up with one of the DOWs, the TIV, and posse heading south towards Grand Island. All in all, it was just like the rest of the spring, a lot of hype, little juice, and starved storms.

Wall cloud near Greeley / Howard County line.