Day 6 - Bust! Day 7 - Tornado!

Chasing in Kansas, we followed one storm for quite a while, until the roads wouldn't take us where we needed to go.  Here are some pictures of that storm:

Just beginning.

 Very cool structure.

 Lots of turbulence and rotation.

 As you can see, it was tornado warned.

More mammatus clouds.

We then focused on a second storm that was behind our original one.  We didn't have much light left, and not enough time to get close, but were able to see the tornado on this storm from about 10 miles out.

The wall cloud at sunset.

Here is the tornado!

Finally, day 5 (Wednesday)

We chased around Lincoln, NE on Wednesday and followed the only tornado warned storm in the area.  We saw a couple of funnels as you will see.  Here are pictures of the 2 cells we followed.


Cell # 1:

Here's our storm.

 Some rotation here.

Cell #2 (the tornado warned cell!):

Gustnados.

Wall cloud.

Possible tornado.

 Crossing the road about 1/4 mile behind us!

Another funnel.

Rotating cell.

This was a pretty cool day.  In spite of technical issues like data sites going down, we were still able to find this really great storm, and follow it. 

Too much chasing, not enough time (Day 4)

We've been chasing, which is good, but haven't had time to write a post.  So I'll just post pictures from Monday and Tuesday and write in more detail about the chases later...

maybe : ).

It's official!

My cocoon of technology ; )

On the storm.

Being chased!

Mammatus.

Pictures of the storm.

Nasty hail core.

We are in the blue circle!

Coming soon...Day 5!

Day 2

We began yesterday with a decision...do we stay put for one more day, or do we head south to an area with limited probabilities for storms.  Since the point of this vacation is chasing storms, we decided to head south to an area that had a small potential for thunderstorms with some hail and wind.  Our goal was the Wichita Falls, TX area, so we headed out in the morning, as we had a good 8-hour drive ahead of us.The storms were predicted to fire after 4pm, so we had just enough time to get there.

As we were nearing the area, we saw a storm fire up and began to navigate to intercept it.  I must give the National Weather Service (NWS) kudos for their forecast ; ).  They were right-on with their predictions of small "storms."  We chased the cell for a couple of hours as it moved east, then south.  As we got closer to it, we saw another "storm" pop up just west of where we were, but to get to it we had to "punch the core" of the storm we were on. Now, don't get too excited, it was a very small hail core (plink, plink!)

We then set up on a road to wait for the next cell to come to us.  A little more hail this time, but again, tiny.  And that was about it for the day.  Nothing spectacular, but successful in finding the only storm around.  And we had fun!  Mark says storm chasing is just like fishing, catching a small one is still better than working.

And I just want to let you all know that we weren't the only "crazy" people out there.  There were several other storm chasers following the same storms.

Today we are driving, and driving, and driving!  We're heading to North Dakota where the NWS has given probabilities of 15% for severe weather tomorrow.  

Our First "Official" Chase - Day 1

And...we're off!  Our storm chasing vacation has begun.  We had a minor delay in getting started, but one that we were happy to have.  Our second grandson made his appearance on Friday!  We spent the day with our kids and enjoyed both the boys.  Cuddling with a newborn is just the best!  And running with a 2 year old is such fun, even if it is exhausting.

So, for our first chase experience we were limited in how far we could go, but thought we would try anyway.  We decided to make a drive toward the Kansas/Nebraska state line, north of Salina KS, where it was predicted that some storms could fire in the late afternoon.  

While monitoring the radar and watching the sky, we made adjustments to our location as the afternoon progressed.  And by luck (I would say) we ended up in place to watch a tornado warned storm that popped up just south of the KS/NE state line and traveled ENE near Chester, NE.  It never produced a tornado but it was fun to watch.  It was great practice for trying to stay ahead of a storm, moving along with it, but still being able to see the structure.  We were able to capture several pictures of the storm structure, along with a wall cloud.

The storm dissipated after about an hour, and our chase ended.  In spite of not seeing a tornado I would consider this a successful chase.  I was able to get us close to a storm, follow it, get some pics, and have some fun!  At that point we headed back to stay with our kids for the night, but made plans for day 2 of our trip.  We'll have to wait and see where that leads us.