Southeast Nebraska 6/1/09

well for the 2nd day in a row, i was able to go out chasing. today's setup wasn't really any better than the day before though. originally, the forecast was calling for a pretty good chance of tornadoes along a warm front that was going to set up along the ks/ne border. however once again the stronger upper level winds were displaced way further north than where the best instability was. so despite plenty of juice in the atmosphere, there was nothing there to turn the storms. storms exploded rapidly by 3, but almost immediately turned into a huge multicellular mess. storm motions were often less than 15 mph too so where the rain fell in southern nebraska and northern kansas amounts were up to 5 or more inches in places. i went out again, just to go, because the season isn't that long! i went to lincoln and then south towards beatrice. there was a pretty good cell that was moving north towards tecumseh, ne so i headed that way to intercept it. as i was heading south, i came upon the front edge of the cell. the first real good view showed a nice inflow tail, that actually began to look real interesting for a while as it stood more up and down vertically, almost taking on the look of a funnel. it was pretty easy to see it wasn't rotating though. the storm went just east of tecumseh, and i started to head west towards some more cells. these stronger cells were almost another hour away though, and i figured that by the time i got to them and the way the storms were behaving they wouldn't probably be nearly as strong as they were now. so i turned around and started heading back in a general direction towards home. i drove through the first storm that now was nothing more than very heavy rain. just south and east of nebraska city i came near a very impressive looking storm that was already to my southeast. i stopped along a gravel road and took some more pics there as well and some short video. this storm also had a nice looking lowering for a while as well before it dissapated. after this i drove the rest of the way home. i am really getting antsy for a nice tornado chasing day before the "season" is over. hopefully the rest of june will not disappoint, as this has been a very slow season so far.

view of the storms to the south from south of lincoln

close-up of anvil of one of the storms

first severe warned storm near tecumseh. notice the interesting looking lowering!

pic of the lowering on the storm a few minutes later

first storm, notice the striations on the edge of the tower


another pic of a developing looking shelf cloud

lowering just before it disappeared

second storm southeast of nebraska city

again, notice the heavy rain and hail shaft of the storm

northern edge of storm near nebraska city

again

nice lowering with an inflow tail on the southeastern edge

lowering a little larger on second storm now

storms moving into omaha at the end of the evening