June 25, 2015 western Nebraska storms

A long drive from western Iowa was staring us in the face this morning, as the risk for severe weather was well to our west.  SPC showed an “enhanced” slight risk of severe storms from about Goodland to Chadron.  My forecast and strategy today — get to North Platte and Ogallala and find a storm.   The tornado chances were very slim.  Lunch was at a Runza in Kearney, and as we continued to the west, a long-lived supercell was diving southeastward through the Sand Hills and aiming for I-80 between Ogallala and North Platte.   We exited near Roscoe and watched the storm approach.

It didn’t look half bad early on.  Its base passed just to our east at Roscoe, and hail up to half-dollar size was in the core.  But, then the cell decided it had had enough and it fizzled very quickly.  We continued westward, and were a little too late to see a tornado that was reported near Bridgeport, NE. Convection got a bit messy in the southern Nebraska Panhandle, and I decided to go for some semi-new storms near the Wyoming border.  We set up south of Bushnell at sunset, and managed a few pretty pictures.  None of the storms here were well organized.

(The following day was the final one for Tour 7.  We headed down to the Pueblo area and came up to a rotating updraft west of there, near Penrose, but the storm was DOA.  I didn’t even get the camera out.)