Chase Case #2

[Paul Austin]

Andrea- can you (or anyone else who chased that day) clarify where all those tornado reports are from with the Grand Island supercell? With all that RFD dust being kicked up I'm sure there were quite a few false reports. Verne Carlson has video of a tornado dark from that storm as LCL's dropped from loss of diurnal heating:

I would bet there were quite a few false reports.

I don't have any images or vidcaps, but we got on the storm just NW of York on the south side of the airport. We observed what we believed at the time to be a very weak tornado around the time of that 9:41 pm report (it was after dark, Daren), but with so much dust, we figured we could have been mistaken. Supposedly, there was some minor damage near the airport, but we never went back to confirm. Perhaps I can capture a still from our video.

 

[Brian Stertz]

LOL and in RL this day I chased the supercell that meandered over by Audubon IA. It was pretty high based and seemed to struggle overall with getting things condensed down to lower levels. Pic from that day :

 

[Dennis Dennison]

I settled on Aurora,Ne, I went strictly on the maps put up, I didnt try to find matching maps, and went on my own instincts-although I did waste a lot of time driving around, I managed to pick a point that was near 20 miles of the big storms-and I am certain had i actually been there that day, I would have been watching the sky and got into something--so I feel good that i would have scored a hit. There was also severe weather not far from Pampa,Tx, but no tornado.

 

[Dennis Dennison]

Yes, I forgot-Thanks for these--It is good practice,and C H E A P!!!!!

 

[John Farley]

Well, I put myself in a pretty good place for the Iowa storm in Nebraska City, but as is often the case, what I would have seen had I actually chased this would have depended on decisions in the field. If I had gone after the Iowa storm as soon as I saw it on radar or visually, I might have scored. By the time of the 2330Z radar Chad posted, it would have been difficult to catch, but of course the storm was there earlier so I might have moved earlier. From the Twister Sisters' photo, it looks like the tornado was visible from behind the storm, so approaching from the SW might have been fine. OTOH, the structure was obviously better with the Grand Island storm, which I was too far east for. Still, since my mid-afternoon position was within 70 miles of where tornadoes occurred after 000Z, I put myself where I had a chance if I made good decisions once the storms went up.

BTW - I looked this day up on the NCDC storm events page, and it indicated 3 tornadoes on the Iowa storm and 2 on the Grand Island storm (but lots of funnels also on the latter).

Thanks for all the work on this, Chad - great exercise!