| Tornado Alley 2004 Chase Trip DAY 3 - JUNE 13TH, 2004 - NEBRASKA CHASE By Martin Kucera - FloridaLightning.com |
| At 11am we left Kansas City for St. Joseph. Arrived at St. Joseph at noon and realized the SPC downgraded the moderate risk for the area to a slight risk. At 1:45pm crossed Nebraska state line going west. Beautiful day, clear blue sky. No Internet coverage. |
| That`s when you feel like you are in the middle of nowhere. |
| At 3 pm we arrived at Beatrice, NE. What a beautiful place. Distant cells start to go up. At 3:40 pm just got a tornado warning for Buttler Co., NE - about 1hr. away. |
| At about 4 pm we notice a strong looking tower just ahead. |
| At about 5:15 pm things start looking really interesting. These cells were tornado warned at this time. The chase was on. |
| 5:20 pm. Tornado reports were now coming from everywhere. Not sure if this was a tornado just before we arrived here. |
| It was a nice classic looking supercell structure and the sky looked quite disrupted. Talk about learning new things or just being confused by everything in the sky you look at. Every meaningless lowering seems like a wall cloud to you but you feel like you are learning by the minute. One of the best days this season. |
| 5:40 pm. Can not keep up with the storm. But the views are incredible. At this time I talked to a friendly local who told me he just got news from his friends this storm caused some major hail damage several miles ahead. You would just want to stay at this spot with your jaw dropped and just keep watching. But you know you have to go for there may be even better views somewhere farther along the way.... |
| Same storm but a different angle using my medium format camera. Sky to the right appeared nearly pitch black. One of the best views so far on this day. |
| 5:45 pm. What I remember the most is how much I enjoyed the structure of thunderstorms. 2004 was a record year that everyone wishes would happened again. Even more so with lame seasons such as 2006 and 2007 when compared to 2004. |
| It took a short drive and almost an hour for the supercell ahead of us to get going again. Also the view where you are directly under the flanking line does not allow you to observe the features you`d like to see. But the rainbow was a spectacular sight. |
| So after driving for about an hour and when it seemed to be all for the day I look behind us and spot a brand new cell in the distance. It formed literally within minutes. The hard part was to find the road option that would allow us to follow the storm. Notice the environment. Blue sky, not a tiny cloud in the sky, only the developing supercell on the horizon. This storm was rolling into Iowa from Nebraska. Photos taken somewhere along the I-29 going south, looking to our east. |
| Later in the afternoon I decided to follow the storm just a little closer. The road followed the cell exactly how I needed it. I guess if this is your one of the first chases the main trouble is not knowing the storm structure. I think I did not even know a storm would have a very specific structure like I would later learned. Thus we stayed quite far away which was not bad for structure shots but won't help you much learning more about a storm. Later on we cautiously started approaching storms more closely and experience grew rapidly from then on. But even today I still enjoy staying farther away for better views. |
| The supercell really got going a short while later. It was late afternoon and this is the ultimate success to me when you are alone with a storm like this with a perfect view... all you have to do is to catch up with it and enjoy it. Some people judge their success by seeing a tornado or not... To me, it might be a bit different of what I consider a good chase. I enjoy a structure like the above and will be perfectly content. What more could you ask for... just you and a supercell. Amazing. |
| Almost a sunset time and the supercell is rotating wildly by now. Constant rumble of thunder can be heard. But I still have this newly discovered respect for what is in the sky just ahead of us. We are not going to get any closer to this supercell today. |
| (c) 2004 www.FloridaLightning.com |