Omaha Tornado Chaser: SE Nebraska, NW Missouri Supercells 6/7/09

Writing my entry for this chase, I am left feeling disappointed again that I didn't see a tornado, but the chase overall was pretty fun at times. I returned home from a camping trip around 2 pm and immediately checked the latest weather forecasts, models, etc. there was a moderate risk of storms this day and it still liked like things could get active. my friend casey and i left town by 3 pm with an initial target of marysville, ks, just across the nebraska/kansas border. as we headed south out of lincoln, we noticed a cell that was just south of beatrice moving to the northeast. originally i was going to let this storm go as it wasn't impressive at first and the spc talked of more explosive development further west a little later. as we pulled into beatrice i pulled up the radar again and this first storm was showing a pretty impressive hook, so we decided maybe this would be our storm for the time being! we started to head east as the storm was now approaching pawnee city. several minutes later a tornado warning was issued! the storm was producing rather large hail, at least golf ball sized, so we didn't want to core the storm to get back in front of it so we had to try and find a road that would take us south and around it. we found a road and began to take our "detour". soon however my computer lost internet, which i'm still unsure whether that was my computer or that verizon's broadband service actually wasn't available. after some further issues with road options we eventually ended up in pawnee city but were still behind the storm! just before town we stopped when we noticed some large hail on the ground. there were alot of quarter sized stones, but also alot of ping pong/golfball sized stones too, so we stopped and got some pics. as we pulled into pawnee city, i was looking up at the back of the storm and noticed a little "finger-like" funnel. this lasted only about 20 secs before it vanished. we still were heading towards our original storm when finally i had internet again. the update now showed me the storm we were after had weakened slightly and was now only severe warned, but there was a storm that we had seen on radar earlier that was now the dominant cell and was tornado warned heading towards the missouri border. we changed paths and headed towards this storm. eventually we hit I-29 and raced south to the exit we wanted to take to get east into missouri. just before we got to the interstate we began to run into tons of storm chasers that were trying to also catch up with this storm. along the interstate we crossed several spots where there was large hail in the ditches. the storm was still tornado warned and had an amazing hook echo on the radar this whole time. driving up to the storm was absolutely amazing. it was probably the most impressive looking updraft and storm i have ever seen!! the tops of the storm were estimated at 60,000 feet!! also there were reports now of baseball and larger sized hail falling with the storm. we turned east into missouri still trying catch up to it. it's amazing how hard it is to catch up with a storm when it is only moving at 30-35 mph! we weaved our way around nw missour finally catching up to it near hwy 169 and hwy "d" near cosby, mo. here we saw a bunch of chasers and finally a larger funnel. we quickly pulled over and took some good video. the funnel only lasted about a minute before it dissipated though. after this we hopped back in the car and continued on. at this point though it was getting later and later in the evening and i was nearly out of gas. i found the closest gas station with the gps and we decided that with only about 1/2 hour of daylight left and still no tornado we would break off the chase and go get gas before going home. we decided to stop at the top of a hill that had a good view of the storm looking east. my stupid computer had quit working again, so we just watched for a bit. when it came back on a new tornado warning had come out with now a tornado reported on the ground near amity, mo, only 6 miles away!! the chase was back on! the storm continued east and we caught up with it near maysville, missouri. as we pulled into town the rain was whipping around in what seemed like all different directions and the tornado sirens were blaring. there was also probably close to 30 storm chaser vehicles and the TIV. i had to stop and get gas and then we were on again. there was a report now of just a rotating wall cloud and baseball sized hail with the storm. again we stopped to turn around as it was officially dark and if there was a tornado it would be rain wrapped. we ran into a guy though that we had met back at the gas station in maysville, and while chatting with him another amazing storm report came out of multiple funnels and grapefruit sized hail!! so one last attempt was made to get close to the storm. finall after another 10 or so miles we stopped for good. we again sat there and watched the lightning show and chatted. we then noticed lightning back behind us that seemed to show up out of nowhere. looking at the radar we discovered storms rapidly developing to the southwest of us. we were just east of I-35 on hwy 6 now so we headed back to I-35 and then south to hwy 36 and then went west. we ran into the newly developed storms and had to pull over due to the very heavy rain and the hail now falling. radar showed up to 2.5" hail was coming so we didn't want to be driving in that. we tried to pull under a canopy at a gas station just north of cameron, mo. here for 15-20 minutes we experienced flooding rains, hail that would get up to quarters, and very gusty and rapidly changing wind directions. the storm let up and we started west once again. we still were watching the radar and it looked like a hook was starting to form on the storm just to the south of where we were. about 10 minutes after we left, there was a tornado warning issued with rapid rotation right north of where we were! this storm went on to produce a possible large tornado with damage northeast of there near gallatin, missouri. we continued to head home to finally arrive in omaha about 130 in the morning. final tally for the trip was over 500 miles and 11 hours in the car!

storm summary from kansas city weather office:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/eax/?n=severe-jun072009

reports page with pics and videos from stormchasers that day:
http://stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?t=21021

short video of funnel cloud we saw near cosby, mo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3FAns0dN8w

longer video showing different parts of our chase:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R46-NGIbnho