Omaha Tornado Chaser: 5/30/11 Memorial Day chase Nebraska

My string of frustrating chases and chases ending with no tornadoes continued this day. I was fairly excited and optimistic in the days leading up to this chase as very strong instability and wind fields would lead to a good severe weather day. The only negative was the upper level winds were fairly unidirectional, so there was a likelihood storms would turn into a line fairly fast. My hope was to be in the right area when the storms first formed. I originally chose central Nebraska, but then changed my target to northteast Nebraska/ southeast South Dakota the day before. However, when I woke up the morning of the chase, it looked like central Nebraska would be the best starting point to get the initial storms.
I unfortunately had a pretty crappy chase partially due to bad road network, bad internet coverage, and a horrible time trying to find a gas station!! I originally targeted Broken Bow, NE, but left Omaha late by about 45 minutes. I was hoping this wouldn't cost me and the storms would hold off but of course they didn't. The initial storms that fired and kept refiring were up near Brewster. I headed north towards Taylor and then west towards Brewster. As I was heading west I could see a nice lowering and what looked like a wall cloud forming to my north. This was the storm that went on to produce the tornado near Rose. The only way to go north though was to backtrack to 183. I attempted this but realized the storm was going to get away from me. I figured I might as well wait along 183 for the next storm to move through. However, I was getting low on gas. Back when i first came into Taylor from the south, I somehow didn't notice the OPEN gas station that was about 1 mile south of town and my garmin didn't even show it existed. When i started looking for a gas station, I didn't find one in Taylor, so I ended up all the way north in frickin Bassett, having to drive through the severe line of storms. This "detour" to get gas cost me easily more than an hour and half. I made it back down to Taylor and met up with a friend, who of course was waiting at the gas station, but by now the line was overtaking 183 all the way south towards the interstate.
Here's where the fun started. I knew we would be in the line forever as we headed south, so we made a turn to the east towards Ord. The road was winding though and the line was picking up speed so it took forever to get out in front of the line. We managed to get out in front right in Ord, and as we came out on the other side of town, I saw the largest gustnado I have ever seen! For a while i swore I could see a broad lowering and a "nipple" like funnel(kindof reminded how the Aurora tornado started out), but I'm not sure. Apparently right after we left Ord, an 83 mph wind gust came through and damaged the airport.
We were riding the gust front again, struggling to get out in front of it. Finally we had to stop briefly in the town of Fullerton. We stepped out of the car and it was warm and humid again. No longer than a minute later though the cold air and winds slapped us in the face and we knew the squall line that was warned for winds up to 90 mph caught us again. This time though we had to head south on Hwy 22/14. About 5 miles or so down the road, I suddenly saw a HUGE power flash to my right up ahead! I began to worry whether there was a possible tornado that had spun up. Soon the winds picked up like crazy and visibility went down to about 100 feet in blowing dust. Then there was another power flash in about the same spot as last time! We reached our east road, Hwy 92, and headed on. The insane winds continued though, and suddenly out of nowhere there was about a 6-8 ft branch lying across the center of the road. At this point it was dark, so I had little time to react and drilled the end of the branch with my left tire as i swerved to the right. Luckily, it didn't do any damage to my car or tires. A little bit after that, there was a grove of trees on the north side of the highway. As we were driving through that area, the winds really picked up again and suddenly tons of debris were flying across the road. I was waiting to get hit by a large branch or hit one lying on the road again, but made it through ok. At some point, after what seemed like forever, we made it back out in front of the line. My buddy stopped in Osceola at the gas station, but I kept on, not wanting to get swallowed back up by the line. My friend did fall back into the line though, and told me that as they were driving down the highway they saw a couple of street signs get blown over by the wind. There were reports of 70-80 mph winds again with the line. I made it back home to Omaha, no more than 15 minutes before it hit my house, but by then the storm had weakened and the winds only gusted to about 45 mph at home. What a way to end what would have been one of my worst chases ever!