June 29, 2009 Alliance, NE high-based mediocrity

What more can be said about this chase day that hasn’t already been said?  Well, a whole bunch, given that today’s activity was run-of-the-mill and nobody has much to say about it.  Fortunately, I recall a few things.  This was Tour 7’s first full chase day and Rob Petitt was my driver.  After the orientation in Denver on the day prior, we chased a tornado warning near Colorado Springs.  As it turned out, the warning was more exciting than the actual storm, which was a typical high-based outflowing junky mess.  Fortunately, the storm croaked relatively early in the day, and allowed us to explore an abandoned house near Last Chance.  I hate it when storms interfere with the old house photography.  In lieu of accommodations at the old house, we stayed at the Rodeway Inn in Fort Morgan.

And now back to the day at hand.  We scooted up to Scottsbluff for lunch, and later observed a handful of marginally severe cells in the northern Nebraska Panhandle.  These were nice and discrete and high-based, but exhibited minimal efforts at mesocyclone organization.  We saw some one-inch hail stones north of Alliance and gleefully reported these to the NWS.  A pretty storm passed over Carhenge just before sunset and provided some photo ops, and on our way to Chadron for the night another updraft and its lightning had me reaching for the camera tripod.