Day Twelve

Woke to a cool, cloudy morning in Goodland, KS.  We’re hoping the stratus deck left over from yesterday’s convection breaks soon or it will be a no-go kind of day.  We’re on our way to North Platte, NE, in the hopes of seeing discrete cells.  As we’ve seen so far, chasing clusters and lines is not a lot of fun, and could even be hazardous to one’s health.  The SPC is thinking the western Dakotas and eastern Montana for a slight risk, but a check of the WRF model run out of NSSL shows potential discrete cells in western Nebraska, and it was dead on with the Colorado tornado yesterday.

Just to recap, we’ve seen HP supercells, MCSs in the form of lines and clusters, and a bow echo on this trip.  We’ve also seen a fox, several deer, and a pheasant.  We also gave a bird a serious headache (if not outright killed it) as he ran into our windscreen.  We’re still hopeful for a LP supercell (the UFO), but moisture has been somewhat abundant.

Made it into Nebraska (again) and the cloud deck has broken, and we have a few fair-weather cumulus (cumulus humilus) developing.  Our former student (Caitlin) is out chasing again today.  Not sure whether we’ll meet up or not, as we’ve not had a lot of success previously.  Plan at the moment is to head north on Nebraska 61 to Ogallala, then head east to North Platte.

Things are changing.  SPC is considering a tornado watch for the Nebraska Panhandle north through the western Dakotas, so it looks like we’ll be taking that left turn at Ogallala (instead of east toward North Platte).  Concern is the cap in the Panhandle (undular nature of the clouds, low, flat-topped Cu), but there is little if any CIN to be seen.

We’ll be spending the night in Chadron, Nebraska.  How places like this can charge more than $100 a night on a Sunday is beyond me.   

A number of Midwest gas stations charge more for regular unleaded than for plus or super.  This might seem strange at first, but the higher octane gases apparently have ethanol in them, which lowers the price per gallon.

Made it to Bridgeport, Nebraska, home of the tractor junkyards (see pics).  Now headed north to Alliance, but a meso discussion just got issued for the Nebraska Panhandle (where we are) south to northeastern Colorado.  It’s discussing the potential for high-based storms with little possibility of tornadoes (too dry in the sub-cloud layer).  We’ll probably stop there and figure out our next move.

Moved north out of Alliance and turned west past Hemingford and stopped near the intersection of Nebraska 2 and 71 to wait for a storm to pass just to our north.  Got some great shots of the cloud and a dry microburst, as well as a very nicely developed storm about 60 miles to the south.  We then headed east again on Nebraska 2 to wait for the storm to pass.  Got to see the shelf cloud and some serious lightning, some close enough that I was nervous for people standing outside (and got blitzed by mosquitos).  Also got to see the inflow into the back (west) side of the cloud, which was unusual.  We got our LP supercell!

We kept heading east on 2 and got to the intersection of Nebraska 385, which would take us to Chadron (our home for the evening).  Looking at the radar, we had a choice of heading south and back toward Alliance to see if storms to the south would be worth chasing.  After a fashion (and about 20 minutes), we decided the storms were weakening and should head for home.  On the way we saw the sun setting behind a beautiful Cb with crepuscular rays (which caused us to stop and take pictures).  Later on the way a look in the rear-view mirror showed a beautifully lit Cb—again, picture time.  To cap an already spectacular day off, we got treated to a spectacular lightning display.  While standing outside of the hotel watching it, we heard a siren go off—not possible!  Turned out to be a signal calling the fire department to duty.

Over 330 miles driven today.  All in all, a phenomenal day, the perfect way to end the chasing part of the trip.  No tornadoes spotted, but still a great trip.  The next two days will be spent at the South Dakota and Colorado parks.  Good night.