Living the Dream

Today, we woke up in Omaha, the largest city in the state of Nebraska. The plan was to head south and across state lines to Topeka and wait for the storms to form, and basically come to us. The indices this morning were amazing, and the risk level was at moderate, the first time we have seen that on this trip. Unfortunately, a moderate risk level for severe storms in a bad season for chasing also brings the chance of a mob of chasers flocking to developing supercells.

We left the hotel at half past ten, and headed straight to the capital of Kansas. We ate lunch at Wendy’s and waited for the storms to fire up, hopefully in our vicinity. We spent several hours in that Wendy’s, either tossing the football around and even sleeping in the vans, which were like saunas with the outside temperatures in the 90’s and nearing 100 and dewpoints being very uncomfortable and in the high 60’s and 70s. This reminded me of the muggy conditions I am accustomed to in a common Cincinnati summer.

Sure enough, the minute I got to sleeping in the middle seat of our van, I was awakened by some of the chasers shaking the van and telling us that the storms were beginning to explode just north of us, which actually meant that they were on the Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri border, nearly an hour and a half away. After refueling, we shot north towards Falls City, Nebraska. Two supercells were developing rapidly with CAPE values in the 4000’s, which is an extremely high amount and great for severe weather development.

As we approached, we noticed several chase vehicles and teams stationed all around on small turnoffs and gas stations, but that would only be a precursor to what we would see later. Our cell that we were chasing at first was small, but eventually swallowed the northern supercell and became one, massive cell near the four corners area. We got into a caravan of sorts and headed due east following the quickest storms we had chased this trip. Thirty-five miles per hour doesn’t sound that fast, but catching storms that don’t wait for anything is more difficult than it would at first seem. After our storm got tornado warned, things really started heating up.

We soon passed into our 10th state on this more than seven thousand mile journey trip, Missouri, at about 5 this afternoon, or 6pm in Indiana time. As we passed into the small town of Oregon, Mo, we noticed that we, along with other chasers, were quickly grabbing the attention of the locals. Whether they were watching us from their front porches, in the downtown areas or from their cars, we were clearly making them nervous. The town had just been hit head on by the supercell we were chasing, and on the eastern side of town, our second van stopped momentarily to collect hail samples that were 3 inches in diameter after being on the ground for 20 minutes, so it was safe to assume that it could have been close to grapefruit sized (4 inches) when it first made contact with the surface. This is not only dangerous to property, but livestock and your own life can be quickly ended if you were to be struck with this size of hail.

We kept moving east in pursuit of our supercell that was producing very dangerous conditions, not only to us, but for the residents of the towns that we were passing through. Traffic started picking up at this point, as several teams had pulled off to the side of the road to watch the storm develop and strengthen. Many others like ourselves continued on, fighting the local yahoos who unwisely decided to join in on the chase. There were honestly, hundreds of vehicles and chasers within a few miles on the particular road we were traveling on, including the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), and even Reed Timmer from the Discovery Channel with his SIV that we saw earlier this trip, only this time in action:

We saw several wall clouds and maybe even a funnel at one point, but no tornadoes were visible. There was one report this evening of a tornado in Weatherby , MO that was rain wrapped, or nearly impossible to view from almost any angle. We were less than 5 miles from this tornado, if indeed it was a tornado, but of course we did not see it. We were in perfect position if it would have been visible, but as our luck has been for the entire trip, we saw only a rainbow.

Today was our last say for chasing on the Great Plains. Tomorrow morning, we are heading back to Indiana, but might not get back until late, especially if we decide to chase the storms that are predicted for tomorrow in Illinois and our home state. We have accomplished many things that we never thought we would do on this trip. We have been to 10 different states, from South Dakota to Texas, and from Colorado to Missouri. To accomplish this feat, we traveled over 7000 miles at last check this afternoon. Our furthest travel day was a heck of a haul, when we traveled from Kansas to Texas and booked over 700 miles. We had enough free time to sight see and saw things from the Grassy Knoll to Mt. Rushmore to the Geographic Center of the 48 Contiguous States. We did have our fair share of weather as well on this trip, and it has progressively gotten better as the trip went along. We have met a ton of unique and interesting individuals and groups out here on the plains, including Earth Man at the Colorado Rockies game who got numerous calls on his cell phone from the regulars who wanted beer deliveries from him, many friendly and interested locals, and another collegiate chase team, including some girls I ate dinner with tonight, whose professor Dr. Arnold initiated the Storm Chase Team and basically the whole meteorology department at Ball State before he moved on to a smaller college in Maryland. Meeting new people is always nice, and it is one of my favorite things to do. You can learn vast amounts of information and gain priceless stories and insights from people you would otherwise never have known. Moving on, we started off chasing “SEE TEXT” boxes from the Storm Prediction Center, to supercells the past few days. I have learned more information from this trip about meteorology than I have in my first year of college and possibly even in my life. If I ever get the chance to go storm chasing in the future, I now know how to do so safely and what to look for and how to even forecast my own chasing adventures. Even though we hadn’t seen what we planned to all along, we still saw a lot of great and amazing things, and overall, had a great time meeting and cooperating with one another out here on the Great Plains, chasing storms, and living the dream.

I thank you for following me on this journey, as random or exciting as it might have been at times. If you feel the need to ask any questions or comment on the blog, feel free to contact me at btmaushart@bsu.edu. As always, thanks for reading.