May 25, 2013 Hazard, NE convective junk

Tour 4 for Tempest Tours began on May 25, with three vans full of guests.  Brian Morganti, Chuck Doswell and Justin Pletsch were in the “Doswell” van; while Chris Gullikson, Steve Pekich and I guided the other two vans.  There was a slight risk for severe storms over much of western and central Nebraska, which meant that we had a long, hard drive after the tour orientation around noon in OKC.

We made it up to I-80 at York with a couple of hours of daylight remaining.  An agitated area of clouds near Custer County drew us westward and then northwest of Grand Island.  We stopped near Hazard, NE, and watched some junky updrafts struggle.  My notes indicate that these were “left movers”.  A stronger storm to our distant west after sunset provided some lightning photography opportunities (and the updraft does indeed look like a “left-split”).  Apparently the storm of the day was near Gothenburg, around 7 p.m., which produced baseball-sized hail.  It may have been the old Gothenburg storm that we were watching after sunset.  Our home for the night was Grand Island.