2026--Day 2

 A leisurely rollout after nearly 700 miles of driving, and we're heading for Iowa to start our first official chase day.  Wish us luck...

Several more hours and miles behind us led us to the junction of Iowa, Missouri, and Nebraska, where we are waiting for some potential action.  In the meantime, we did see some minor Kelvin-Helmholtz instability put some waves on these clouds near Essex, Iowa.  It didn't last long, as the waves were gone within a minute or two.

We're in a bit of a quandary at the moment.  We're sitting near the Iowa/Nebraska border just east of Nebraska City, waiting for something to pop.  (The two things you never see in chase videos are all the driving and all the waiting.)  There is some potential, but the atmosphere is taking its sweet-ass time.  Meanwhile, there's potential tomorrow for action in the western Dakotas, which is a (to use the technical vernacular) a LONG ASS DRIVE from here.  If we continue to wait, it means a later drive to set up for the night and an early rollout in the morning, and not likely being able to get into place for action tomorrow.  If we leave here too soon, we run the risk of missing anything local.  In any case, we should be able to get in good position for Sunday's festivities.  Decisions, decisions....

In the meantime, here are somr decent pictures of crepuscular rays (looking west towards Nebraska).

Sadly for us, there is a storm about 90 minutes west of us that is tornado-warned, and while it's effectively stationary, it wouldn't make sense to go to it.  After more waiting, a bit of faint mammatus on the underside of the anvil from storms to our (well) west showed up for our troubles. 

As the sun was setting, the mammatus were even more spectacular.  It (almost) made up for missing the tornado-warned storm to the west.

We were also treated to nearly continuous lightning as the western storms approached.

Perhaps most amusing was this little almost thunderstorm near Percival that couldn't quite get its act together.  Maybe the atmosphere was sending us a message. 

After a quick dinner in Council Bluffs that we cut short to avoid getting rolled over by storms (spoiler: we weren't entirely successful), we left for Sioux City (call sign: KSUX) to spend a short night. 

Final tally: 567 miles, 1249 total for two days.  God help us.