Omaha Tornado Chaser: June 2009

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

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

severe weather outlook with moderate risk

hook echo on supercell west of pawnee city, ne

view of the backside of the pawnee city storm

closer view of intense updrafts of storm near pawnee city

again

great view of intense storm near pawnee city

near golf ball sized hail just west of pawnee city

again

close up view of supercell in nw missouri

again

pic of funnel cloud near cosby, mo

closer shot of funnel cloud

tornado warned cell near amity, mo

again

backlit shot of storm at sunset near gallatin, mo

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

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

Monday, June 1, 2009

SE Nebraska/SW Iowa and lightning pics 5/31/09

This chase was pretty uneventful. I knew though before leaving that there probably wasn't going to be much so it wasn't a surprise. Morning clouds finally gave away to warm late spring sun and temps rose up into the 80's. However moisture was severely lacking as dewpoints in the morning started out in the upper 30s. they did a nice job of recovering but were still only in the lower to mid 50's by late afternoon. This really stunk because the winds were very favorable for rotating storms, but unfortunately the cloud bases were too high. There was even alot of doubt on whether storms would be able to fire through the warm mid levels of the atmosphere. I was at home, deciding to cancel chasing for the day when I noticed some cells popping south of lincoln. i watched them for a while before they suddenly grew pretty rapidly. i happened to look at my back patio and i could see a huge tower to my south. at this point it had been 3 weeks since i had been able to chase so i decided to go knowing this wouldn't be a very long chase. i headed south down I-29 and ran into the first major cell. i think i was just ahead of the main hail core though so i only experienced rain. the storm visually was pretty impressive especially from afar, but as i drove through it and seemed pretty unorganized and high based. i stopped just south of the cell, and pulled over to take some pics. the storm was looking better here from the south again. i took some pics of the precip shaft to my north and also a pretty good view of the smooth underside of the storm where the updraft was. i went east into iowa eventually ending up as far east and south as a town called riverton, ia in southwest iowa. it was getting close to sunset so i decided to start the hour drive home. once i got home, i was watching the news when the weather showed a line of storms that i believe were along the warm front that had just developed in the last 20 minutes. these storms were about 25-30 miles south of omaha on a west to east line. i looked at the back again and i could see the towers with the lightning flashing in them being also illuminated by the moon. i wasn't able to get any pics right away but went out and got some pics right before the moon was taken over by the growing storms. my battery ran out after about 15 minutes, so i had to quit for a while. the storms died down shortly after so i thought i was done for the evening. after about 45 minutes though, i looked out and noticed more lightning. i checked the radar once again and now a new line of storms were lined up east to west just south of omaha by about 10 miles this time. these were much closer so the lightning was better. i took pictures off and on for about 45 minutes. right before my battery was getting low again, the lightning really got intense. unfortunately i kept missing the big bolts expcept for the last pic i posted. i really love taking lightning pics(as you can probably see)!!