2005 STORM CHASE ACCOUNTS

Brian Thalken, Jim Kaiser, Jason Ehmke and myself made it down to southcentral Nebraska (southwest of Hastings, NE) and witnessed isolated, but weak thunderstorms struggle to persist in the weakly unstable atmosphere present underneath a mid-level dry slot. Storms would form east of a stationary front draped north to south over the region, at which point they would then propagate northwest and cross the boundary...moving into cooler surface air. This probably didn't help matters...we concluded the chase early and grabbed a meal in Hastings at around sunset.

WEATHER DATA FOR THIS CHASE	CHASE PICTURES
SPC DAY 1 OUTLOOK (1630 UTC) 250 MB (00 UTC) 500 MB (00 UTC) 850 MB (00 UTC)	NONE

Jim Kaiser and myself targeted Marysville, KS, and intercepted an isolated cell located west of that town immediately upon arrival. The storm looked a bit disorganized at first, but quickly organized during a span of 20 minutes, developing a visibly rotating updraft tower and a widening rain-free base. The cell appeared to remain anchored over the same location during the first 30-minutes of observations, but then developed a rear-flank downdraft, which seemed to accelerate the storm to the north, and at the same time led to an occlusion underneath the base. The storms wall cloud began to rapidly rotate near the town of Hanover, KS, with a large towering clear slot present above the low-level mesocyclone (time was about 3:36 pm). This was an impressive site, and Jim and I felt pretty confident that it was only a matter of time before the storm would produce a tornado. However, this didn't happen. After this event occurred, the storm re-organized its base to the northeast, with a long, rapidly moving inflow tail developing on the north side of the storm, ingesting air from the northwest. We followed the cell north, and noted that multiple inflow tails were developing at various levels of the storm. We eventually crossed the state-line back into Nebraska, with strong rotation developing from cloud base up to the anvil. During this time, we met up with Mike Hollingshead and Amos Magliocco. We eventually pulled over on a dirt road to chat about the current storms potential, when all of a sudden, a very strange thing occurred. We were watching the storm to our west/southwest, overlooking a green grassy field. We suddenly noticed a swirl developing in the field, associated with some kind of vortex that wasn't associated with any visible cloud base feature. This vortex was rapidly accelerating toward our position...once it reached us, we were blasted by gravel and I thought I could actually feel some upward suction as well (this occurred at ~4:42 pm). I have never experienced anything like that before. Immediately after the vortex passed, a brief period of rain occurred. Perhaps a downdraft associated with the rain acted to tilt the local vorticity upwards, inducing a small, 20-50 yard wide vortex. After this strange, yet exciting event took place, Jim and I decided to call off the chase because the storm was dissipating as it moved further north into bad air.

WEATHER DATA FOR THIS CHASE	CHASE PICTURES
SPC DAY 1 OUTLOOK (1630 UTC) 250 MB (00 UTC) 500 MB (00 UTC) 850 MB (00 UTC)	Check out Mike Hollingshead's and Amos Magliocco's chase accounts and pictures for this supercell.

Brian Thalken and myself observed a fairly intense supercell today in southcentral Nebraska. We initially expected convection to fire closer to the NE/KS border, however, it soon became obvious that the main action was going to occur closer to York, NE. We intercepted a supercell which was fairly isolated near Geneva, NE at around 6-6:30pm. This storm had a large rain-free base, and an ominous looking precip core to our north. Apparently, several tornadoes touched down near York right before we arrived, however, the NWS issued a new tornado warning for our cell just as we were intercepting the storm. We pulled off the highway at 6:45 pm, and large hail then began to fall out ahead of the updraft...we decided to reposition to the south. The storm was fairly high based during this time, yet the updraft rotation above us was very obvious. At 7pm, large hail was falling over our location once again, so we dropped further south. A new tornado warning was issued at this time for a portion of the storm which was ~5 miles to our north. We could now see a wall cloud developing within the notch of this evolving HP supercell. We then decided to go east on highway 74 in order to maintain favorable back-lighting of the wall cloud feature. Although low-hanging scud was present beneath this wall cloud, it never evolved further, and the cell began to weaken overall. We decided to head back to Lincoln at this point, with new development forming further to our southwest (with reports of baseball size hail falling over our previous location south of Geneva).

WEATHER DATA FOR THIS CHASE	CHASE PICTURES
SPC DAY 1 OUTLOOK (2000 UTC) 250 MB (00 UTC) 500 MB (00 UTC) 850 MB (00 UTC)

The wind profile today didn't look too promising initially, which kept me from leaving Lincoln, NE until about 5pm, when a strong supercell developed near Kearney, NE. I raced west on I-80, and then north through Aurora, NE, at which point I could make out the structure of the supercell. After going west on highway 92, I soon intercepted the base, and noticed that the storm was beginning to gust out. However, a new cell developed west of this decaying supercell, and rapidly intensified. The storm developed strong mid-level rotation, and was strongly ingesting scud at its base. A clear slot developed, and began to notch into the base, which cause the scud to re-orientate into more of a vertical position. The scud then began to rotate for a few minutes, but this dissipated. I continued to follow the supercell as it moved north, observing beautiful supercell storm structure at sunset.