2015--Day 13

A bit earlier start to the day, but it works out because we ended the day in Mountain time.  We're heading east, so we'll lose that hour shortly.  Conditions are modest today, but we're hopeful for something in the south-central portion of the state, along/near I80.  We may actually wind up doing some chasing tomorrow in and around Iowa, on our way home.  It's hard to believe that we've been at this almost two weeks....

Had an early lunch in North Platte, and the current thinking is to stick close to town.  We did decide to move north a bit, away from the city.  On the road out of town, we drove by a radio station with the following call sign:

     K O O Q

Also saw this family-friendly sticker on a SUV...

We're watching some convection trying to get its act together to our northwest.  The obnoxiously painted vans (Extreme Tornado Tours or something like that) just raced past us, so I guess we're headed in the right direction.

Around 2 pm local we engaged an interesting storm to our north and west that went from nothing on the radar to an impressive supercell in a matter of about 10 minutes.  We watched it for a while south of Thedford, as a cool (temperature-wise) RFD moved over us between 2:45 and 3:00 pm.  Had to leave, but in the process rain through a bit of the cell's hail shaft (mainly pea-sized). 

Pulled in for a fillup and an emptying at a Sinclair station in Dunning, Nebraska (Kadir really wants one of those green fiberglass dinosaurs), and the station had mechanical gas pumps.  I'd not seen one of those in eons.

Chased some storms for a bit through central Nebraska.  There was that greenish color in the sky that is often associated with hail, and some shelf clouds too.

Been heading south on US281 for a while in pursuit of a storm on our way to Grand Island.  Pat Market and his crew are maybe 100 miles east in Columbus with the PRECIP crew.  I hope their radiosondes work better than ours.  Around 645 local, we're watching what appears to be a wall cloud with a couple of funnels.  Will they touch down?

Around 7:30, we stopped north of Central City and watched a cell that was likely dominated by outflow, but was still interesting.   Driving through Central City was rather interesting, as are driving through some very dusty outflow.  Actually had to stop to let it go by, as we saw a large branch down in the road.  The wind rocked the vans.

We stopped for a pee in Aurora, where the largest hailstone ever recorded fell.  Saw these beautiful wave clouds.

We're making our way to York for dinner (Chances R), eventually to land in Lincoln for the night.  While eating quite possibly the best French onion soup I've ever had, the floods arrived.  Lots of lightning and rain, yay.  At least we caught a break in the rain while we loaded the vans.  A long, windy, rainy trip to Lincoln, and that’s a wrap.  Plenty of wall clouds, some funnel clouds, some great structures, lots of wind, rain, and lightning, but once again no tornadoes.  Still, a pretty great day.  Only one state, but still 425 miles in total.  And it’s still thundering...