Smiles, Sighs and Surprises

This weekend has been full of smiles, sighs ans surprises. What started off as a huge bust day on Friday due to a lack of moisture over southern Nebraska, and then a travel day on Saturday to Sioux City, led us to chasing today over South Dakota and northern Nebraska, and now our stay for the night in Grand Island, Nebraska. Lets start out with Saturday.

After a big bust Friday, we ended up staying at a pretty nice establishment in Abilene, Kansas. They had their fair share of amenities including a pool, hot tub, and a nice courtyard for yet another BSU Chase Team pick-up football game. We decided to leave a bit late, because this would primarily be a travel day to position ourselves for Sunday's good weather outlooks. We went north on some state roads, going through many small towns until we eventually passed through the capital city, Lincoln, Nebraska. We decided that this would be a good opportunity to grab a bite to eat, so Dr. Call recommended a local favorite, Valentino's. For only $7.29 or so, we had as much of the salad bar, pizza bar, chicken fingers, bread sticks and desserts that we could eat. Some of us, unfortunately, decided to eat way too much and felt bad for the next several miles, but nothing horrible ever came of it. We then made for Sioux City, Iowa, but first we passed through the small city of Wahoo, just for the sake of it's name.

Then, after the fair majority of the team, including myself went to bed, time appeared to fly by, and within no time, we arrived in Sioux City. We unloaded the vans and almost everyone decided to get some of their dirty laundry out of the way. I decided that this would indeed be a good idea, so I got some of my own stuff together and headed to the laundromat. About two hours later, we had a late dinner and turned it in for the night, because Sunday would be one of our best chase days, if not the best, for our trip.

I woke up today, Sunday, at around 9 this morning to the news that our hotel had more storm chasers than just ourselves. When I first heard that Reed Timmer and his crew, along with their Storm Intercept Vehicle, or SIV were parked out front, I didn't believe it. It had to be too good to be true, but I walked outside in my PJ's and a storm chasing t-shirt, and sure enough, my dreams came true. We knew at that point that we must have put ourselves in a good position if the professionals were also in the same area, nevertheless the same hotel. There was also an "Extreme Tornado Tours" group that stayed at our hotel the same evening. Though there would be no luck in any "touch-downs" today, there would be many promising sights and adventures instead.

We headed out at around 10 this morning, with the goal of heading west, to watch storms develop, and then travel back east with them to intercept any severe weather phenomena. On our way out, we constantly monitored our "Threat-Net" system and our other online sources. We started to get very disappointed rather quickly with the lack of dew point temperatures and moisture made us think back to the bust situation we faced on Friday. Although some of us tried to remain optimistic, the clear blue skies as far as the eye could see were not helping us, but it was early.

Around noon or maybe a bit later, we spotted some cloud growth on the horizon as we headed due west towards Winner, South Dakota. We stopped to monitor readings online and observe the clouds to see if there was any rapid changes taking place. Sure enough, we were witnessing the start of a busy afternoon. The clouds were rising at a great pace and soon busted through the cap and eventually formed into the classic anvil shape. We moved south a bit to catch up with the developing thunderstorms to our west. We stopped again shortly after to reshape out plans for intercepting and recorded more photos and movies. We chased the same cell for a few more hours and finally, after it appeared to weaken, we decided to go eat in Broken Bow, and call it a night. After our meal at McDonald's, we pulled out onto the road and noticed that to the east there was a strong looking storm with a well defined inflow tail, a characteristic of a severe storm. We quickly pulled up Threat-Net and and the team was once again in full chase mode. As we moved east on the southern end of the storm, we noticed that the storm had quite a bit of lightning, and was developing signs of wind shear, necessary to form tornadoes. But with our luck, daylight was quickly running out. After going down a dirt and gravel road, not ever recommended by the way, we decided to call off the chase and stopped at the top of a deserted, dirt driveway to take lightning photos and video footage from the storm. This video is of the chase down the dirt road towards the storm:


Soon after, we headed back with cloud to cloud lightning surrounding or vans to where I type this now, in Grand Island, Nebraska. I'm not sure why they call it Grand Island, but I would assume they have some kind of splendid island here of some sort, just a guess. Tomorrow is not looking too splendid, and we may head south. If we do chase it will be in Iowa and northern Missouri. We heard from a local that another storm chasing team is nearby in another town. I'm sure neither of us will know what we are going to do tomorrow for sure until we are actually doing it. As always, I thank you for reading, and on some boring or uneventful days, or even if we get back exceptionally late to a hotel, I might not post a blog, but the next evening I will fill you in on all of my adventures. Comments and suggestions are appreciated.