Storm Chase One
Season 2009
Chase Partner - Leader Michael Carlson
Welcome to the good life it says as one enters into the state of Nebraska…they do not lie. I partially feel this way because the majority of my family is from Nebraska and I am a huge Cornhusker fan! On the other hand June 1st proved to be the good life in Nebraska for none of those reasons. I have loved weather all my life and love what Mother Nature can show us, with its devastating power and wrapped up in shear beauty. This was only my second chase I had been a part of and I had a great tour guide to go with, Michael Carlson. We were chasing a marginal set up off of boundaries that were coming off of a cold front that was pushing though. Our target zone was McCook Nebraska, in south west portion of the state. We sat and waited in McCook and watched Cu building to our North and our South anxiously waiting for the CAP to clear our and convection to take place and soon the decision came on witch to embark upon. Our main goal for the day was to get on storms with large hail as the set up showed favorable for with high dew points and minimal shear in the upper atmosphere. We decided to travel north toward rapidly shooting towers near North Platte. Our first intercept was a cell indicating a small couplet and hail indices of 2.00”. Driving North on I-80 was a joke cars everywhere as we drove though the down poor and hail to get in an angle to see this beast and we were in for a treat. Once we got through the entire HP we saw a beautifully structured Meso. The curvature of the inflow bands and the wall cloud were a site for me to see as I have only seen pictures from other chasers with this being only my second chase. Sadly as fast as we flew to get to the storm she rained herself out just as fast.
Our next target was to drop a little south east and intercept a core for large hail. The hail indictor was 2.00”. We sat and waited when soon it came. The largest hail that we got was about an inch in diameter with a few being up to a 1.25”. The size was not the impressive part of this storm it was the longevity of the hail. Michael and I sat there for a good 15 minutes getting pounded by hail and as we left the storm the was run off of hail and water coming towards us with roads glassy from marble size hail all over it and hail drifts an inch deep.
We noticed later that down south into Kansas just south of McCook was 3000J/Kg of CAPE!! Driving down there was another beautiful to the West that we stopped as all it wanted to do was model for us behind the setting sun. The structure was gorgeous with a teared wedding cake look to it and it sat there as we snapped photo after photo and Michael got a great time lapse of it in its glory. While this Meso was modeling for us the A-Bomb that was going off in 3000 Joules of CAPE just behind us did not want to be out done. We would turn around to shoot the Meso and turn around to look at the bomb at it would seem to have doubled in size. We quickly jumped on this massive storm as the core on radar was unreal and soon chaos would ensue.
A storm just to the south of us would become tornado warned with a dopplar indicated tornado. Needles to say we hauled down to catch it and as we arrived the tornado warning was lifted and TVS (Tornado Vortex Signature) had just posted on the previous bomb that we had been watching. We cruised back to that one in a lightning show, whose beauty could not be explained in words. As we got to the storm the warning was once again lifted, but from the lighting of the Weather Gods we could see once again marvelous structure of yet another Meso. This one looked to be vertically stacked almost two Mesocyclones one on top of the other. We could see a wall cloud on the Meso, but we did not see any funnels or tornadoes from where we were from even though there was a tornado reported on this beast. Soon we would get hit with the bow echo of these storms with numerous TVS reported on them, we flirted with the notion of checking them out up close, but figured the night time elements were to risqué and our day of epic chasing fulfilled our needs and more for the day so we headed back to I-70 to head home. We traveled stretches of I-76, I-80 and I-70 nearly doing an entire loop and over seven hundred miles of roads covered and 15 hours on the road I believe well paid off. Core punching a couple different storms seeing a-may-za-zing structure on three different Mesos, at times possible funnels and shear funnels 1.00” and a little bigger hail and amazing lightning. I have Michael’s great forecasting and driving skills to thank for getting us into position for these storms and for making my second chase and first of 2009 a very memorable one.
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