May 11, 2014 – Southern Nebraska Tornadofest

What can be said of this day! Caryn ran a private tour and this was one of the final days, and an amazing event it was! A warm front lay across southern Nebraska, while a dryline extended south from the surface low. By late afternoon several storms formed north of the warm front in the cold air where there was not a capping inversion in place. Finally the triple point storm formed, and rapidly became severe. It didn’t take long for the supercell to nearly anchor and become violently tornadic. It produced several tornadoes, including a huge wedge near the town of Sutton, Nebraska. It also produced numerous tornadoes Caryn and the tour were able to witness, of about every shape and size imaginable! Roger was in Oklahoma City with a new tour arriving this day and managed to run north into Kansas and capture a couple very pretty supercells, one of which likely produced a brief tornado.

October 4th, 2013 – Northeast Nebraska/Northwest Iowa Tornadoes

October 4th looked crazy on paper. Great shear, super lift, great instability and moisture for Oct spelled big trouble for the folks in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa. We left early morning in heavy snow and fog from our home in Colorado, and headed towards Lincoln, NE where we’d decide to head north or east. A supercell formed north of Columbus and was moving away from us so we decided to play the patience game for something further east. Soon a wedge tornado formed from the first supercell and we were feeling pretty bummed. Finally our storm got going as it crossed into western Iowa, dropping a large tornado west of Sloan. After an occlusion, a second, third and fourth tornado formed and the latter becoming a large 1.5 mile wide wedge heading near Climbing Hill northeast towards Cherokee. We had to stop the trip as we encountered a destroyed farmstead north of Climbing Hill, where our search resulted in no injuries, except farm animals. Fortunately, no fatalaties occurred that day, but a lot of destruction of property. Here’s a 10 minute video from this day:

July 9th Central Nebraska Tornado and Supercell

July 9th appeared to be a marginal set up. Shear wasn’t very good, and moisture was fairly lacking. However, moisture pooled along a boundary and winds on the north side of the boundary were easterly, giving a bit of enhanced low level shear. By mid afternoon, several storms developed, with one cell north of Cozad becoming a monster supercell very quickly. The rapid development stretched low level vorticity very fast and a nonsupercell type tornado formed. It persisted for about 5-7 minutes before dissipating. Please excuse the poor quality of the tornado shots as they were taken out the windshield while moving. Other cells become photogenic (and severe) as we chased till mid evening.

May 26th Central Nebraska Tornado Warned Supercell

Wasn’t really confident in a decent storm on May 26th. Nature sure changed that though in a hurry! An intense, highly striated supercell formed northeast of Broken Bow, Nebraska and became one of the best structured storms of 2013. It was tornado warned for hours as well. The storm produced baseball sized hail and was also quite electrified in its lifetime.

May 17th Hyannis, Nebraska Tornado Warned Supercell

What a surprise this day was! After a cluster of weakly organized storms formed over the sandhills early afternoon, another storm, a rotating supercell, developed near Hyannis. Shear increased as evening came and so did the structure! A very pretty tornado warned supercell that was quite photogenic and electrified continued until near midnight.

June 22nd Nebraska Briefly Tornadic Supercell

June 22nd had some great potential. A warm front lay across the NE/SD border, with a dryline extending south from it. I have to admit, my target that day was the warm front/dry line intersection near Lusk, then eastward as storms could potentially ride the warm front. Indeed, the storm of the day did just that and we missed it due to the this being the final day of the tour and our tendency to lean south towards the Cheyenne ridge, which was also a viable target. We intercepted a supercell near Sidney, NE that rode eastward and became a very nice supercell. It produced a brief, 2 minute tornado, before becoming extremely photogenic.

May 18th Nebraska High Based Supercell

May 18th continued the trend of decent shear and little low level moisture. We started the day in southwest South Dakota and drifted southeast towards central Nebraska. By the end of the day we would have a high based supercell, which was severe warned, that produced copious amounts of CG strikes, many quite photogenic.

July 11th, 2011 Western, Nebraska Sculpted Supercell

July 11th resulted in a lot more than I thought we would get. Modest CAPE and shear ended up producing a few pretty supercells, one of which anchored east of Chadron, NE. Storms had decent structure and respectable electrification. We sat around Chadron for a big part of the afternoon until things finally started developing. Several funnel lookalikes occurred that were called in as funnels/tornadoes, but of course were later discounted.

June 20th, 2011 Nebraska Tornadoes

This day had tons of potential. But the question was where to chase. First target of north central Kansas early on panned out as one tornadic beast formed and produced numerous tornadoes. Check out Mike Umscheid’s “Under the Meso” website for what he witnessed there. Spectacular! The second target, along I-80 from Kearney eastward also panned out. There were a couple of very tornadic supercells there that produced several large and photogenic tornadoes. The worst thing in the world would be to get caught between the targets, and low and behold, THE MOST FRUSTRATING DAY of 2011 award, goes to this day. Dave Gold came out to chase with us and too much hesitation on which target to play cost us dearly. We still witnessed 6 tornadoes, but the ole “what could have been” (and what SHOULD have been) haunts me to this day. Wow, awful results. Every chaser has a day or two each year they regret, this is THE one for me for 2011.

June 19th, 2011 Southwest Nebraska Tornadic Supercell

One of the frustrating days of the season. We sat in Ft Morgan, CO too long as storm exploded in Colorado and southwest Nebraska. We tried in vain to get to the storm near McCook, only to be greeted with a rotating storm that had already produced its last tornado. It tried several more times, but couldn’t do it. Then we watched at night as a marvelous cork screwed updraft lit up the sky.

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