Omaha Tornado Chaser: 4/23/10 Eastern Nebraska

I had another "disappointing" chase today, so to speak. Everything looked pretty good for several tornadoes, and even a couple a days prior the Storm Prediction Center was worried about a lot of tornadoes with some possibly strong. The day of the chase they backed down on their wording, but there was still a 10% chance of tornadoes, which is pretty darn good! i asked sarah to come along since it was going to be a close chase and this seemed like a pretty sure bet to see something cool. it's been pretty ironic though, everytime sarah has come with nothing has really happened! we left about 130 and headed west on the interstate past lincoln. there was a tornado watch issued for central and western nebraska and the storms were supposed to form along an arc from western to central to southeast nebraska and then move north. we went as far west as seward, nebraska and then waited. and waited, and waited...... at first the clouds were mushy looking, but finally they started to get bigger and taller. we looked back towards the east and thats where they were really starting to look good. so we started heading back towards omaha! i had several small computer issues today and that slowed me down a few times, how annoying! once the radar wasnt working, another time my internet quit, another time my gps mapping software quit. each time i had to restart the computer. we eventually ended up back on hwy 6 and 30 just north of elkhorn(only about 10 miles from home!) and waited for a small thundershower to move over us. the storm clouds were looking alot better, but didn't show much on the radar. finally a few more cells popped up southeast of lincoln and those at first didn't do much, but suddenly went severe. so we started heading back south. i took hwy 92 i believe west towards wahoo, nebraska. then we headed south. it was getting dark at this point(8 oclock), but just to see something we were going to drive in front of the storms and let them come over us. they were severe warned now with quarter sized hail. as we headed south and found a road to sit on and wait, the storm went tornado warned!! the circulation was going to pass just west of us, and knowing storms can turn right without warning i wanted to get a little further east. we meandered east around memphis, nebraska(town ive never hear of!) and waited there. the hail size was now showing 2" which is bigger than golf balls so we sat there and waited to get hit. unfortunately the storm weakened a little and the biggest hail was marbles with maybe a few quarters. finally we headed back home, stopping along the hwy between gretna and elkhorn to get some lightning pics. i am still learning my fancy camera, and so there were several times once it got dark where i just couldn't do anything with it so eventually i had to use sarah's trusty ol camera. it does take good lightning pics though!! so we did end up on the only tornado warned storm of the day, but couldn't see much bc it was already dark. didn't get any real good lightning pics, and oh yeah sarah and i almost got hit:( it wasn't as bad as it sounds, but when we were pulled off at the last spot taking pics, i should have put on my hazards, but didn't. a car was heading towards us down the gravel road and we were sure they would see us in the headlights, but apparently they didn't til the last couple of seconds. it was close enough where i flinched and stepped on sarah's toe!! i will always put on my hazards now, especially at night!! here's hoping to an active may and june!

forecast sounding for omaha at 4p, notice the large curved hodograph, lot's of CAPE, and no cap. unfortunately there ended up being a cap between 700-750 mb level