Long Storm Day, Amazing Storm Night
NE Colorado and SW Nebraska
19 June 11
SHORT: Observed high-based, nondescript storms in eastern Colorado, pretty supercell that got undercut by outflow NW of Wray, and messy CL-HP storm between Benkelman-MCK-Cambridge NE. Spectacular nighttime lightning and storm-structure show at Alma NE with two supercells.
LONG: Starting the day in ITR, we had a pick of two nearly equidistant targets, both in very favorable shear for supercells:
1. The higher terrain of central Colorado to our W, more certain for initiation and more moist than yesterday.
2. An outflow boundary over SW Nebraska and NW Kansas, loaded with right moisture but also uncertain on position and timing of storm potential, if any.
The decision was tough. After looking at observational data of many kinds, I still was undecided but leaning W. High-resolution, convection-allowing models started showing meatballs of high reflectivity evolving from early convection rolling off the Front Range foothills, and fairly consistently from hour to hour. We went that way, careful not to get totally out of reach of the other area, should it go.
An early cell formed off the E end of the Cheyenne Ridge and moved E across the SW part of the Nebraska Panhandle, within reach but outside either forecast area. Even though we could see the anvil storm to our distant NNW, and it started acquiring supercellular characteristics in reflectivity and SRM displays, we stayed the course.
Even though the western area ultimately didn’t pan out, it’s a good thing we didn’t go after the first storm up north–it would have put us out of position for an amazing nighttime show we never saw coming.
Yes, the western storms never got organized. Mike Umscheid and Jay Antle joined us for a spell NW of Last Chance to shoot the breeze in the breeze, bemoaning the disorganized nature of initially promising storms that had erupted to our W. Many times I’ve seen high-based “junkus” storms in eastern Colorado, streaming mammatus and virga, their updraft regions looking like fuzzy rubbish, eventually develop into tremendous supercells. This time, they weren’t.
Deep convective towers formed in the differential-heating zone under their collective anvil edge to our S, SE and ESE, including some big ones developing where the anvil edge passed over the old outflow boundary to our distant E (near the KS/CO/NEb border confluence). They kept thickening and growing until we couldn’t stand it anymore. The models were well-past due for the Colorado meatball that wasn’t to be. The models failed. We threw in the towel on area #1 and headed E in effort to salvage area #2.
By the time we neared the familiar town of Yuma, a big, visually beautiful storm had formed from the towers still to our E, and a deep, supercellular radar echo showed up NE of Wray. As we approached the storm and Wray, we had to stop briefly for this shot looking NE, the robust updraft structure rocketing aloft through clean blue-sky surroundings.
On radar, another supercell had formed in Nebraska to this storm’s E, quickly developing a hook echo. The first one being closer, we headed through Wray to take a look. Unfortunately, the choppy terrain of the Republican River drainage (which always seemed higher than the road on its N side, where the storm was) seldom allowed us a view under the base. By the time we reached the Haigler, NEb area and could get glimpses beneath the storm, we saw a ragged wall cloud but experienced a cold N wind. Outflow! The eastern supercell had spewed a big rear-flank outflow pool that already was blasting past us, and definitely undercutting the near storm.
This mean we had to keep going even farther E, and attempt to intercept the second supercell before dark. On radar the hook looked phenomenal. Tornado warnings blanketed the storm, but in the late-afternoon light, all we saw was dark, slate-gray murk to our NE from down in the valley. While approaching Benkelman from the WSW, with occasional glances between the hills and tall cottonwoods to our NE, we finally saw the cloud base–a large, bowl-shaped lowering, and then, a smooth, tapered tube extending toward the ground! Alas, we had to keep driving to get closer, as contrast was terrible from that distance and viewing angle. This turned out to be a short-lived tornado, very photogenic from a few perspectives other than ours; but we got no pictures of it.
We didn’t see the next brief tornado NNW of MCK, probably due to buildings and other visual obstructions during our brief passage through the W side of town. Feet still on the pedal, we turned N out of MCK, finally in position to see the storm from its inflow region for a few minutes before it blasted past. N of MCK, we stopped to see that the storm clearly had cycled out of its tornadic phase, shooting outflow past us and past its once productive mesocyclone region. I was just relieved to get out of the vehicle and stand for a few minutes!
We headed back down through MCK and E of town, encountering the first really dense concentration of chasers I had seen the whole vacation. Most were well-behaved. Still, it only takes a few morons opening doors into traffic, parking halfway into the traffic lanes, and pulling out into the highway without signaling and at dangerously slow speeds, to heighten tension and create unsafe experiences for everyone. I did a lot of honking and, I must admit, played a little “finger music” in the direction of some of the thoughtless dipwads.
The storm itself, a ragged mess charging toward us and right behind us as we rolled ENE on US-34, almost became an afterthought, as we dodged needless human-caused traffic hazards. [Others had it worse. A tour driver later told me that some sadistic yokel in front of them deliberately drove 20-25 mph in a 55-mph zone for several miles, visibly laughing at and mocking them the whole time.]
I was on edge, and ready to blow this whole ordeal off. Fortunately, darkness started to set in, further motivating us to bail S, out of the way, and search for lodging and fuel. One final observational stop S of Cambridge to view the HP mess to our WNW, and we called it a night (or so we thought). Enough was enough.
Heading E through the southern Nebraska night, we hit town after town that had rolled up its sidewalks for the night, all services closed, no petrol or lodging to be found. Finally we reached Alma, tired, irritable and frustrated after a long day, needle nearly on “E”, having had nothing for dinner but snack food, the last few hours spent mostly stern-chasing or being chased by a difficult, messy, tornado-warned storm, without seeing much except for occasional dumb drivers. Regrettably, I was neither the most clued-in nor the friendliest person to be around at that time. The good news is that fortunes would change for the better very soon.
We noticed a locally run motel, of the sort we prefer against the national chains for their personal service, charm and generally lower cost, this one with only one vehicle there. Fortunately the proprietor’s wife still was awake; in fact, from elsewhere in town she saw us arrive and drove over to check us into a big room with a king bed.
As we unloaded the vehicle, lightning flashes from our old storm increased in intensity to the WNW. Radar examination confirmed that it still was a supercell, headed on an easterly path toward our near-north. A quick check of profiler and VAD winds told me the storm had latched onto the low-level jet and would persist for awhile. Even as tired as we were, the lightning-viewing and photography opportunity was irresistible.
We parked next to a plowed field off the NW edge of town as the formerly messy and ugly supercell spun into view as a dazzling, spinning wonder of electric light and swirled cloud sculpture. All our tension and exhaustion vanished effortlessly, replaced by enraptured wonderment. For a brief time, someone (we later found out it was our friend Brian Morganti) cast headlights across the field, which didn’t bother me since it illuminated the foreground in an interesting way as well.
After spending an hour or so in the presence of that gorgeous sky spectacle, we watched it fling two arcus clouds overhead, blocking view of the best structures, then turn somewhat leftward and weaken. We headed back to the motel and got ready for bed, finally satisfied with this chase day.
As I was looking over some final data for determining the next day’s target (which looked to be very near where we were!), a last-minute radar check showed another supercell had formed on the southern end of a short line of storms to our WNW. It was headed on almost an identical path as the first! Quickly glancing outside, we saw distant but frequent flashes. Could it be? Could we get another amazing light and structure show?
The clock already had turned to the date of June 20. It was after midnight, and we needed to get to sleep and get some breakfast in the morning. It was so tempting to fall face first into the pillow and ignore the call of the strobing sky. Another glance outside: the light show was closer and brighter and strobing even more frequently than the first storm had from the same indirect view. We knew what to do.
One o’clock a.m. found us next to another field on the NW side of town, camera on tripod, nighttime supercell number two whirling its way across the sky, bathed in almost continuous, flickering illumination from its own relentless lightning engine. Wow. To be gifted in this way was a blessing beyond measure. Nobody else was out there this time; we had this one all to ourselves. As the brilliant display scooted by to the NW and N, a carpet of thousands of blinking fireflies rose from a grassy part of the field.
This experience, in total, was unbelievable. I shot dozens and dozens of photos of both storms, every last one interlaced with filamentous tendrils of in-cloud, cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-air lightning. Of these, seven have been selected at somewhat larger resolution for a special web page devoted just to this night.
We slept very well after returning to the room, finally at ease and completely contented. One more incredible chase day awaited on what already was among the most spectacular and rewarding Great Pains vacations I’ve had.
High Plains Lightning Festival
Colorado-Nebraska Border Region
13 June 11
SHORT: Began in BFF. Waited in SNY. Avoided outflow-surfing CO/NEb border storms to intercept supercell near AKO, saw probably non-tornadic dust whirls with storm merger there. Fantastic twilight lightning display from elevated storms along border S of IBM.
LONG:
Elke and I started the day in BFF, targeting the general area of the CO/NEb border SE of there. I wasn’t particularly jazzed by the weak lower-tropospheric winds in the forecast, figuring outflow and/or storm splits would be a problem. Still, it’s the high plains in early June with adequate moisture, upslope flow and at least marginal shear. The answer? Be there.
We waited a good, long time at a hilltop outside SNY, just NW of a dryline that eventually would fire up a tornadic HP supercell in the horrible road network and terrain of the Sandhills. We saw those towers to the distant NE, but chose not to pursue given the great difficulties involved with storm intercepts in those parts.
Meanwhile, we listened to meadowlarks and, on radar displays, watched chaser icons on SpotterNetwork zigzag back and forth across the area in impatience as the lack of focused action. Fuzzy storms began to fire between the Laramie Range and Cheyenne Ridge, which was no surprise; their distant bases were so high we could see them from SNY. I wasn’t impressed. Red dots converged on I-80 and headed W. We sat, waiting and hoping instead for dryline development to access richer moisture to our SE and E.
Finally, off to the distant SW, two storms erupted near and N of the Palmer Divide in Colorado. This was near the very southern fringes of our forecast area; but as nothing much was happening with the dryline nearby, and the storms were reachable, we decided to go have a look. Along the way SW, through the convoluted maze of roads that is Sterling CO, the southeast storm attracted quite a few chaser icons. The NW storm didn’t, was closer, and was in a similar environment; so we headed toward AKO to intercept it.
Alas, along the way, the SE storm calved off a big left-mover and died! Moreover, the left mover shot toward the inflow region of our target storm like a torpedo hell-bent on mutually assured destruction of both storms. Briefly, we got a view of the NW supercell’s mesocyclone area to our WSW before the left-mover’s core arrived; and it looked like a somewhat higher-based version of a North Texas HP “Stormzilla”. This meant big hail; so it was imperative to get S fast.
Yet there loomed the left-mover over the road to our S, likely bearing ice bombs also. It got there as we did, just S of AKO. The two storms started to merge overhead, and in the tiny gap between their cores, two strongly rotating dust whirls appeared less than a mile to our W, about 3 minutes apart. [I was driving and driving hard, so...no photos!]
Though a narrow, ribbon-shaped updraft had formed overhead at the merger location, we could see no obvious rotation in it. I attributed the whirls to gustnado-like vortices being stretched where the two gust fronts met. We maintained an equatorward bearing, encountering only marginal severe hail at best (to our relief).
Arriving just S of the combined storms, which indeed were killing each other, we photographed the dying supercell across rain-drenched corn stubble S of AKO. It was good to see Steve Hodanish and to swap Hodo stories with a co-worker of his, and also, to talk with a few other friendly storm observers whom I hadn’t met before. Yet we were essentially stormless, parting ways and headed back toward our various bases for the night. All that was left, for now, was outflow spinning a windmill under a dark and stormy high plains skyscape.
We headed toward lodging in the Nebraska Panhandle, soaking in the sights of Pawnee National Grasslands in anticipation of spending a couple of upcoming non-chase days of roaming around some of our favorite haunts around the Black Hills, not counting on any more atmospheric excitement. As good fortune sometimes plays on previously under-performing storm days, the night brought about an unexpected–and most welcome–show of splendor that made our night!
A short line of elevated and high-based thunderstorms erupted over the WY-NEb border region atop the outflow pool from all the late-afternoon activity, and moved SE across the southwestern Panhandle and across the Cheyenne Ridge. Evening storms like this in the High Plains can spark profusely, and these absolutely did! We found a vantage just over the CO/NEb border S of IBM (Kimball, not the company) and began shooting away at the approaching spectacle. Assorted forked and in-cloud displays slashed across the fading twilight, their reports blasting resonantly across the wide-open landscape. Soon, some cloud-to-air discharges flickered forth, followed by yet more (and closer) sky-splitting CG action. Wow…what a show!
The lightning was getting too close, though; so we drove through the translucent core of the thunderstorm line a short distance into IBM, crossing a few miles of small hail (with almost no rain!) along the way. I’ll never forget the sight of countless thousands of little white hail balls in the high beams–cascading dots of brightness, the only form of light shining back at me along that dark High Plains highway.
After securing a motel room near the edge of town (like we like to do), we noticed the sparkling display still underway to our SE, and headed back out past the E edge of town for a little crawler-lightning show in the trailing precip region. And with a few more flashes to light up the midnight hour across the western Nebraska prairie, bedtime drew nigh, our storm-hungry palates duly satiated. I had very few lightning photos to show for 2011 until this night, when the heavens unloaded electrical gifts one after another in a most dazzling and appreciated fashion.
Surfing the Wake of the USS Hailbomb
A Tale of Two Supercells
7 Jun 9
Pawnee City NEb, to Bethany MO
SHORT: Intercepted Pawnee City supercell for a spell, then failed in prolonged attempt to get around and ahead of the hail-heavy Oregon City/Savannah MO supercell. Interesting structure on both storms.
LONG:
First off, we found out this day about the (non-weather related) road death in Iowa of storm observer Fabian Guerra. Though we didn’t know him, we offer condolences and sympathy to those who did. It was a simple but fatal deal of wrong-place/wrong-time that could happen to anybody who drives. Many of us in storm observing and outdoor photography have plowed into a deer (guilty here, twice) and/or swerved to avoid one, and simply were fortunate enough to maintain control of the vehicle and/or not have the animal come through the windshield. Never take tomorrow for granted!
As for the day’s chase… Elke and I headed for our target area of north central to NE KS — E to NE of the surface low and near the frontal zone. This was “synoptically evident” as they come, in the forecast sense; but mesoscale details (as often) threatened to mess up the chase day. Right as some of the best afternoon heating was about to take place, a thick plume of cirrus cast its deepening shadow overhead, an unwelcome visitor from above, wafted off a band of elevated, middle-level showers to our W and SW.
Despite this annoying development, no other area looked any better. Marysville, one of our favorite towns, seemed a good spot to wait for initiation, so we parked at the hilltop Wal-Mart for awhile in anticipation. The hail event the night before clearly was major, as shredded vegetation covered the ground throughout much of town, with windows broken in some houses and churches. DF and his cousin Samara (now the Two Fogels and Two Dogs chase team) joined us, as did a local spotter (Jamie) who followed us for a couple of hours.
Storms fired directly beneath the decaying remnants of the midlevel convection, in a short line segment from just NW of us (and over the NEb border) SSW to SW of Marysville. I’ll hypothesize that the cap, tremendously strong on the 12Z TOP RAOB, was weakened not only via columnar cooling related to large scale ascent, but also by evaporational cooling from above as the elevated, weak convection precipitated into the warm and dry capping layer.
One storm cluster — W of Pawnee City — seemed destined for good times, being on the boundary and in optimally backed flow; but it needed to shed the deleterious influence of junk storms to its immediate SSE. Meanwhile the tail-end storm (ahead of which we stayed for awhile) looked strung out and high based…a “wannabe” supercell. When the northern storm finally did lose its interfering garbage, it quickly acquired a deep meso and hook, so we targeted it. The tail-end storm fought disorganization for a couple hours, but would go on to become the V.O.R.T.EX.2-targeted Oregon City MO hailstorm.
Our Pawnee City storm gave us some good structure views through somewhat hazy skies, produced a few wall clouds (some weakly rotating), and even a nice RFD cut or two, but never could tighten up that well (wide-angle shot from 8 E Pawnee City, looking SW). We saw Chuck and Vickie amidst what he astutely termed the “cluster-f#&%” of chasers around that storm; there was so much traffic over a blind hill that I momentarily stood roadside to guide them into it.
Soon, the supercell began to get highly tilted and to shrink, while approaching the MO River, so we decided (perhaps a little too late) to leave it. Jamie the Marysville spotter, by then, left us to go home.
Meanwhile the southern storm, which we saw from earliest towers S of Marysville, suddenly was a somewhat sunlit eruption of thick, deep convection and anvil backshearing, beckoning longingly to us from its throne high in the southeastern sky. I never had much luck stern-chasing supercells in northern MO, given the hilly terrain, narrow and curvy roads, untimely towns and slow local traffic. Nonetheless, with a couple hours daylight left and some convincing from DF, we tried anyway…
Hard as we tried, with the river crossing and a tortuous maze of indirect, winding road options, we simply couldn’t get ahead of it without core-punching a rotating wall of hail that was visually apparent around the back of the hook. The hook seemed to park itself on every east road we wanted to take, right before we got there.
At one point near Union Star, a “bolt from the blue” struck less than half a mile to our S, several miles behind the hook and the flanking line. Less than twenty seconds later, we pulled over and I was outside shooting this image of a hailshaft on the backside of the supercell…but not for long, lest the storm recharge quickly and fling another supercharged bolt our way. DF and Samara must have thought I was nuts doing this just a couple of blinks after seeing Zeus’ pitchfork plow into the earth nearby. There was some risk, but probabilities were on my side if I didn’t linger too long out there.
While zigzagging constantly astern of the heavy frozen-cargo vessel USS Hailbomb, as if dolphins surfing back and forth through its wake, we indeed did see some huge stones (greater than baseball size or at least 3 inches diameter). The gorilla hail lay in the grass at Oregon MO amidst shredded vegetation, but we didn’t stop to measure due to the continuing chase.
We finally got near the back side of the hook near Maysville, taking decisive visual measure of a churning merry-go-round of rain and hail curtains orbiting some unseen circulation center to our immediate east. With tornado reports (even if they later turned out to be bogus “sheriffnadoes”) coming from inside that bear’s cage, we decided not to punch through. Instead, at sunset, we finally took the long way around, down to US-36 to Cameron and up I-35 a few miles toward Bethany, but still couldn’t get ahead. That’s when we waved the white flag and let the storm march off into the northern Missouri night.
Some attempts at lighting shots ensued (a decent but not outstanding one, and a better opportunity that I slightly overexposed, unfortunately), along with some conversation with Alnado there, and we headed back toward lodging at STJ. Along the way W on US 36, a dense flock of heavy storms developed atop the supercell’s outflow, coring us repeatedly with blinding rain and intermittent small hail.
A pretty decent chase day was capped off by finding a live brown recluse spider in our room at the Super 8 in St. Joseph (where Charles, Rocky, Bill Hark, Dave Lewison and other chasers also were staying). One of the girls staffing the front desk was frightened almost to panic by it. The other took it in stride, saying, “Oh yeah, we’ve got those all over our house.” At no point did either of them think to apologize or offer comps to this particular customer. I fed the fiddleback to a black widow spider from Oklahoma (my yard, specifically) that DF was carrying around as a sort of chase mascot this year. I also talked to a truck driver in the lobby who had lost all his window glass to what he estimated to be softball sized hail at Oregon City earlier in the day.