Like me, you are probably undecided as to which town in Nebraska would be best for your summer home. Chances are that you have narrowed it down to Brewster, Bartlett, or Burwell. On this day we ambled through these fine hamlets, but unfortunately we were preoccupied with heavily obscured convection. I was unable to make an informed decision regarding summer home prospects as we raced past Burwell, Brewster and Bartlett.
This was a stupid chase day, and I am reluctant to relive it. But I will.
We had our morning weather briefing in Kadoka around 10 a.m., and stupid morning storms were near Kadoka. I forget what I said during the briefing, but here is what I was thinking around noonish:
Moderate risk today with 15 percent (hatched) tornado risk in and around eastern NE, according to SPC. Morning convection in w and c SD and nw NE is causing consternation. Considerable low cloudiness persists over most of e NE at noon. Models suggest a good number of strong storms by late afternoon in se NE, along the warm front, presumably. These could be tornadic supercells, with the huge CAPE values forecast and backed flow at the surface and 850. Another play is in and around Lincoln County, NE, perhaps, where CAPE is great and winds are backed. This morning’s elevated junk might throw out an outflow boundary around there.
We left Kadoka and will dive south from Presho to Winner and likely into Nebraska. Though SPC’s 15 percent hatched tornado graphic includes much of ne NE and se SD, I just don’t see those areas as being good chase targets right now—–though with some decent clearing I guess that would change. Today is definitely clear as mud, so far.
We gassed up in Winner, it was barely noon, and a couple of very impressive supercells were already trekking eastward through giant Cherry County, well to our southwest. I decided to try for an intercept, and we dropped south to Ainsworth. A big beast was approaching U.S. 83 south of Valentine —- we were still too far away to get to it in time along 83. A new (and maybe improved) supercell quickly went up well northwest of Brewster and was approaching Hwy 7, to our south, so south we blasted. The low-level environment was pretty good—maybe too good. It was a humid, murky, cruddy mess. The farther south we went on Hwy 7, the worse the haze and low clouds became. Around 3 p.m. I penned:
We dropped south on Hwy 7 and got in front of the new cell which went up in front of the Cherry County beasts. As it went by just to our north, it started wrapping up quickly and we observed some rapidly rotating precip curtains just to our NE (about four miles north of the Blaine/Brown county line). A lot of CGs and marble hail were associated with this wet meso. Visibility overall is very poor, however, as we could see little until the cell was upon us.
South of the cell a few miles, the murk was worse—-foggy and drizzly. We are between Brewster and Taylor currently, and moving east in case this storm stays strong and visibilities improve. I can’t see more than one mile right now. I am still thinking of blowing this off and heading towards sunnier skies in SW NE, around LBF.
It was really a bummer to be so close to a fabulous storm, and to have such lousy visibility. The storm could have been producing a bunch of tornadoes, there was nothing to hit in these Sand Hills for verification, and we were the only ones around looking and we only had a glimpse of the thing for a couple of minutes! Did I say yet that I hate chasing in the Sand Hills when it is foggy and murky?
Well, we had to stay with it even though conditions were stupid. Here is my next NOW post:
The supercell we were on an hour or so ago is now tornado warned north of Burwell. It has a top at 59k feet and an impressive couplet on radar. We are in Burwell and will move east to try to get a look at it — but it is still horribly murky and overcast here. Slight indications of some cloud structure to the north —- we’ll see.
Still looking for a reason to blast to clearer skies, but finding none.
Yes, I wanted OUT of the murk! But how do you blow off a tornado-warned cell that is less than ten miles away? We headed east on 91 past Burwell to U.S. 281, and scooted towards Bartlett to get back in front of the supercell.
This was one of the few photos that I took this day. The storm was a green HP with little to get excited about visually. We allowed the core to get pretty close, and then dove south on U.S. 281. Heavy rain and some strong winds hit us from the west…and persisted, and persisted, and so on! The storm decided to turn to the southeast. It took us close to 30 minutes to get out of the precip core, and we emerged somewhere around St. Paul. I posted another NOW update to CFDG:
I guess I’ll continue the play-by-play here.
We were chased south down U.S. 281 from Bartlett to St.Paul by a 60,000 foot supercell, but we were in rain and small hail and wind for most of that stretch. We had ventured up to Bartlett to look at the t-warned cell, and we managed to view the meso area to the NW and an ugly green squally thing to the west. By waiting around a little too long we got caught for a very long time in a core. It seemed that the cell turned hard to the SE or SSE right along 281—on top of us. Luckily the hail was only dime size at best.
This system has gone strongly outflow dominant and a huge whale’s mouth cloud greeted us as we exited the rain south of St. Paul. We decided to blow the storm off and to head to GRI —- cool north winds are blowing here currently as the low outflow clouds surge south.
Any hope remaining is minimal for today. There is a clump or two of cu on the southern fringes of this huge anvil, but 700 temps there (along the KS/NE border) are about 15-16C. Supercell and tornado parameter values are huge along the southern tier of NE counties (with CAPE near 7000 and SRH at 600), but the cap is winning big time.
The cell to be on now may be the one in extreme NW MO in the new tornado watch. That is too far away for us. We are heading east to York or Lincoln just in case something manages to go up south of there in the good air.
Shortly after I posted this, I decided to turn around on I-80 (east of York) and to throw in the towel on the day. It just seemed like a losing battle, and the next day we needed to be back up on the higher terrain. Apparently we would have been treated to a nice mammatus display around Omaha had we continued east on I-80—-but I don’t think we missed much else. SPC’s optimistic risk for tornadoes in NE and SD wound up a dud.
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