After lunch in Kadoka, we moseyed east on I-90 to Murdo, on U.S. 83. Unfortunately, it looked like we were exactly between two areas of surface convergence and potential storm development. The first area was to our south, in the Nebraska Sand Hills, south of Valentine. The other area was to our north, around Mobridge. I elected to go for the Nebraska target, in part because storms were already going up, and in part because we were nearing the end of the tour and were due back in Denver the following evening. North of Thedford by perhaps 10-15 miles we found ourselves in front of a little LP cell. It weakened as it moved NNE away from us. Additional activity was developing in linear fashion south-southwestward from our location. I went back south into Thedford, where we stopped for gas and goodies. And, if my recollection is correct here, I think we went north of Thedford again a few miles, were not impressed with the new cells to the west, and were going to check out new storms to the southwest. But when we arrived in Thedford, the cell to the NNW suddenly looked much better. We went north again about five miles to watch it, and the smooth laminar banding looked pretty wild for a while. It took on an HP character, so we went back south to Thedford and east about 15 miles to stay ahead. Some cool outflow winds smacked us as we loitered around the railroad tracks. The storms were not impressive. We went back west to Thedford and then west of town to get on the sunny side of the activity, and got some pretty rainbow and mammatus shots at sunset. Finally, we went east again to Thedford and then south to North Platte for the night. I think we were in Thedford five different times in less than three hours.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.