Day Nine

Long day.  Started at 8:30 am in Omaha, NE with briefing and ended at 1 am in Chillicothe, MO with briefing.  Nearly 12 hours of driving and some scary moments interspersed.  Started in Omaha with a slight risk to the southeast.  Drove down I29 (starting to flood) heading toward the ‘four borders’ region of Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Missouri.  Conditions not the greatest, but the potential was there. 

Made our way to St. Joseph, MO where we stopped for lunch and gas.  From there we headed west on US36 to Kansas (another crossing) hoping to meet up with a former student now in grad school at Wisconsin and to intercept developing cells.  Some of that time was spent on gravel roads (lots of fun).  Saw several very nice houses in places where you wouldn’t expect them, too.  Wound up driving back north into southeastern Nebraska for a short time, only to have to head back into northeastern Kansas.  Roadwork on US36 made things somewhat difficult in terms of chaseability (some rather long waits to pass), but we made it back into northwestern Missouri in time to chase several cells (see pictures of cells from Nebraska and Missouri), including some that were (as Mobile ThreatNet puts it) twisting. 

We were in the right place at pretty much the right time, with warnings starting to fly for cells.  Unfortunately, the cells were clustered and the skies hazy, so the structures were not as clear as we’d like them to be, but we deal with what we’re given.  Never saw any hail, but we did see some leaves and branches on some roads so we know stuff happened.  Road closures in northwest MO caused us some delays as well, which made for some tricky, scary moments.

We must have been in the right place, as we drove past the crew from the Discovery Channel (with the armored chase vehicle) along Missouri Route 6 in north-central Missouri around 8 pm.

Since it was getting close to dark when the real action was happening, there wasn’t as much to see as one would like.  The air was quite humid as well, which led to low cloud bases and a hindering of our vision for things like wall clouds (there were none).  Some of the storms were somewhat stingy on lightning production, but once they lit up, they lit up.  Continuous lightning, mostly in-cloud and cloud-to-cloud was the order of the evening, but there were some fairly potent CG strikes as well. 

We disengaged the chase around 9 pm, when it was simply too dark to continue.  One element that added to the scariness of the situation was that a storm developed behind us, which limited our escape routes.  We would up pulling off the road several times to avoid running into cores, and it was a bit rough at times between rain and wind.  There were also plenty of instances where water covered the roads, and that only added to the potential for danger, especially considering the fact that the road was not lit, aside from lightning.  Fortunately we made it through all the standing water unscathed (vehicle too), but the real fun was set to begin as we arrived in Chillicothe around 10 pm.  We booked rooms at the Best Western, but couldn’t find it.  A wrong turn back onto US36 by yours truly meant that we added 10 miles to the trip back to town.  A quick phone call to the hotel revealed that they were indeed about 30 minutes from where we were.  Thankfully they were gracious enough to allow us to cancel without penalty.  Ironically we found ourselves at another Comfort Inns/Suites (our main choice for the trip), and they were able to accommodate us, thankfully.  Very nice (best one yet), must be pretty new, as we didn’t see it in our searches, and it turned out to be cheaper than the one we booked originally.  Ironically, we took the last available rooms from another chase team (who had a very heavily instrumented truck, along with a mobile radar).  A late dinner at Applebees was followed by an abbreviated briefing. 

Easily the most arduous day of the chase.  BTW, the only tornado of the day appeared northwest of Wichita, KS, which we had no chance of getting to, and it was outside of the SPC’s risk area.  Enough of all that, good night.