4-15-06 Nebraska chase
Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2006 9:27 pm
Wow, I wasn't even planning on chasing on Saturday! I was stuck in Omaha until around 4PM -- and when I was free for the day and saw the storms building to the south, I hopped in my car, checked GRLevel 3, and drove down to just east of Nebraska City. Here I sat up on a hill waiting for a supercell to roll in. Obviously not the best place to snap pictures, but I was more in my "document what's going on" mode than my "take good pictures mode". 
Looking east:
Nice wall cloud with what appears to be a bit of a funnel forming. That's about as good at it got with this particular storm. Sitting here, I was expecting the meso to slide just to the north of me if I stayed put. It was a bit tricky, as there was second storm trying to develop just to the south of this one, and I wanted to stay out of the precip of both. Eventually I gave up and proceeded east to Nebraska City, then into Iowa.
When I was in Iowa, I was a bit irked to discover that I can't get cellphone data. Apparently, data connections via Alltel don't work in western Iowa. Without radar, I just kinda sat there and watched the sky. It seemed like everything was going linear, so I drove back through Nebraska City, punched the line, and went back atop a hill to try to get some photogenic shots of the backside of the line:
Then, of course, I hear on the radio that supercell is dropping a tornado just south of Nebraska City. GrLevel3 seems to agree. Sooooo, I drive back through Nebraska City, cross back into Iowa, just to see the line of chasecars coming back into Nebraska. Greeaaat. I pull over to take some more pics of the backside of the storm, which is now long gone (what's left of the supercell is in the lefthand side of the frame; all the stuff to the south is new linear convection trying to fire):
I talked to another Nebraska chaser who told me his tales of great 'naders south of Beatrice and south of Nebraska City. Made me sad that I missed the show, but I still got to see the storms, so no worrys.
Since I didn't have anything else to do with the day, I followed the storms a bit into Iowa on the backside with the idea of maybe getting some lightning shots when the sun set. The lightning shots looked like junk, but the convection towers at sunset were quite beautiful:
All in all a pretty fun chase day. Wish I could have caught the tubes, but given that I wasn't even expecting to get a chance to do anything at all, I'll gladly take what I can get!
Looking east:
Nice wall cloud with what appears to be a bit of a funnel forming. That's about as good at it got with this particular storm. Sitting here, I was expecting the meso to slide just to the north of me if I stayed put. It was a bit tricky, as there was second storm trying to develop just to the south of this one, and I wanted to stay out of the precip of both. Eventually I gave up and proceeded east to Nebraska City, then into Iowa.
When I was in Iowa, I was a bit irked to discover that I can't get cellphone data. Apparently, data connections via Alltel don't work in western Iowa. Without radar, I just kinda sat there and watched the sky. It seemed like everything was going linear, so I drove back through Nebraska City, punched the line, and went back atop a hill to try to get some photogenic shots of the backside of the line:
Then, of course, I hear on the radio that supercell is dropping a tornado just south of Nebraska City. GrLevel3 seems to agree. Sooooo, I drive back through Nebraska City, cross back into Iowa, just to see the line of chasecars coming back into Nebraska. Greeaaat.
I pull over to take some more pics of the backside of the storm, which is now long gone (what's left of the supercell is in the lefthand side of the frame; all the stuff to the south is new linear convection trying to fire):
I talked to another Nebraska chaser who told me his tales of great 'naders south of Beatrice and south of Nebraska City. Made me sad that I missed the show, but I still got to see the storms, so no worrys.
Since I didn't have anything else to do with the day, I followed the storms a bit into Iowa on the backside with the idea of maybe getting some lightning shots when the sun set. The lightning shots looked like junk, but the convection towers at sunset were quite beautiful:
All in all a pretty fun chase day. Wish I could have caught the tubes, but given that I wasn't even expecting to get a chance to do anything at all, I'll gladly take what I can get!