I had a pretty fun chase today, but yet again mother nature left me empty handed with no tornadoes! I was going to go out today regardless of the potential of severe storms, as it is now pretty much down to the last month of what has been a pretty average season. i would say below average for me, especially locally there hasn't been any storms in town, and the there has been really only 2-3 bigger tornado days all spring. of course i missed those days, too! the original forecast for today was pretty "average". there was a slight risk of storms issued 3 days in advance but it was only for hail and wind, even up until the night before the storm prediction center made no mention of tornadoes. i was looking at the models and one model basically showed what the spc was talking about however the other model, the gfs, showed a fairly decent set up for tornadoes. this model showed CAPE over 4000, and the helicity or rotation needed for tornadoes became rather high by evening with values over 250 m/s2. a few other chasers began talking about this day and its potential. when i woke up in the morning there was an average 5% chance of tornadoes across the area. it was supposed to become rather warm and humid, but the question was how much moisture would be here and how close would the temperature and dewpoints remain then. some early morning storms moved through over parts of the area in s central nebraska and also along the nebraska/sd border. this actually helped keep the temps down so the spread wasnt so bad then. later in the morning the spc upgraded its outlook to moderate!! the potential was now realized by the spc and there was a 10% hatched area for tornadoes meaning a risk of strong tornadoes, and also a very high risk of large hail. by mid afternoon temps were in the low 80s and dewpts were near 70, so it was very good for the tornado potential. the night before and even the morning of i was going to head out to near the kansas/nebraska border where there was the best chance of tornadoes. i got off work and went to pick up a buddy. we looked at things and there was a line of storms up near norfolk, ne that was becoming stronger. soon and before we were going to start heading south, there was a tornado warning issued! we changed our minds and decided to head north. sarah just got off work so we picked her up and headed out. we headed up I-29 after some debate of whether to go up hwy 75 towards blair. we didn't know if we could beat the storm there so we went further east and up the interstate. the storms were moving at a perfect speed of less than 30 mph so we got to mondamin, iowa in plenty of time to wait. the storm was still tornado warned with a tornado on the ground near craig, nebraska. unfortunately the stupid missouri river kept us waiting about 15 miles east as we had no place close to cross. we stopped and got some pics and video before realizing the storm started turning southeast. we dropped south to missouri valley iowa, and came out on the highway just west of town. we pulled off on a gravel road that gave us a perfect view of the storm to our west over a field. right as we came around the trees on this road there it was, a funnel more than half way to the ground!!! we all screamed out at the same time, "there it is!!" we quickly got out of the car and sarah started videotaping while i took pics. the storm was amazing and looked mean! it had this deep green hail core and intense lightning. whenever i have been near a tornado warned storm, i've noticed the lightning is totally different than at any other time as there are tons of very large bolts that hit the ground every time. we still all stood outside though! the original funnel dissipated with a couple of minutes, but that same area of the storm kept rotating. eventually another funnel started to form and it looked like this could drop a tornado, but it too fell apart and soon there was just a lot of scud left. the lightning seemed to be focused on that part of the storm too, but i could never seem to catch any of the bolts. even when the lightning flashed where i was shooting continuously, i seemed to miss them. the storm was almost on top of us and looked to be getting a new area of circulation to the south of us, so we hopped back in I-29 and headed south. here we had a dilemma on where to go to stay ahead of the storm. we started to take 680 east but realized that we wouldn't probably have a ways to go to drop south so we turned around. eventually we took the honey creek exit which only led us to county gravel road on the east side. we had no choice but to follow this road south and east now. the storm was on top of us with amazing cloud motion right above us. the storm caught up with us and we could see the rain curtains moving across the road in front of us. the winds also picked up to at least 50 mph. i waited for the hail to come and the winds to increase more as we continued slowly down the gravel road. eventually the map showed us heading into crescent, iowa. it was now dark as night at 530 pm as we pulled into town. it was only raining heavily though so we continued on to council bluffs. as it turned out we were still just far enough ahead of the storm that we avoided the worst of it. there ended up being wind damage that came through just after we passed though town. now in council bluffs we wanted to stop at a gas station quickly before heading on. looking at the radar, it showed part of the line of storms blowing up right over eastern omaha. the radar showed the hail reflectivity maxed out and estimating hail to 3.25"!!! i thought well we're here and we have a place to park the car in a car wash building, let's wait for the hail to come over us. to this day the largest hail i have actually seen fall is just a little bit larger than quarters. i was so excited to see something at least as big as golfballs. soon the hail started but it never got bigger than marbles?! what a disappointment that was! we got back out on I-29 and started heading south again. the storms had formed now into a complete line and the part that we had been chasing and had passed over us was really bowing out now. winds were estimated at 80 mph now! since we were behind the line we decided not to chase it, also thinking that the risk of tornadoes would be better at the end of the line in southeast nebraska. this was the original area we targeted, so we headed that way. we made it to nebraska city ahead of the storms that were only severe warned now for ping pong ball sized hail and strong winds. again we decided to let this come over us, but again nothing happened with hail no bigger than dimes. this time however the radar did show it weaken basically right over the top of us! we headed west now, but watching the storms they weren't doing much to impress me, so we decided to head back north towards home. behind the line of storms was one of the most amazing lightning i have seen! there were these lightning crawlers that would spread out over what seemed like the whole sky. numerous times while one of these bolts was spreading out over the sky, several other lightning strikes would happen at the same time. we stopped briefly and took a few pics, but of course right when we stopped the lightning seemed to stop. we started driving again, and the lightning started going crazy again. at this point we needed to get home, so we didn't stop again for lightning pics.
shot from just west of mondamin, ia looking west towards the tornado warned storm near craig, nebraska. tornado was on the ground at this point
first shot of storm west of missouri valley. notice the white lowering on the right side of the storm
another shot
the only "good" pic of lightning i got. it was so frustrating to keep missing them, even when i was taking continuous shots, i was not getting any
scud forming in the middle of the storm
close lightning bolt! that is a pickup truck passing in front of us
close up pic of the scud
second lowering developing
closer shot
again
rotation falling apart
green core of the storm as it gets closer
shot of tight rotation on storm near fort calhoun. there was no confirmed tornado with the storm at this time but it looked very impressive. our location is actually the white circle with the dot in the middle just to the right of the storm. we were very close at this time and could see a wall cloud to our west!
shot of the rotation with that storm. the red next to the green in the middle of the screen shows strong rotation
clouds were basically scraping the ground!
first of the two good lightning shots i got on the way home
second shot
moderate risk outlook issued at 1130 am
tornado risk issued. hatched area with higher risk right in southeast nebraska. tornadoes occurred outside this area
hail probabilities. very high risk of large hail, forecast were of greater than 3" hail possible
wind probabilities
tornado watch issued
route taken. once again my program froze up in the middle of the chase, and i had to save and restart so therefore there's been two maps lately. how annoying
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