Adam and I left Chicago at 10 PM on Friday and drove through the night
to North Platte, NE. by 12 noon. We booked a hotel and caught a two
hour power nap before heading down I 80 for a Kimball, NE target. We
neared Sidney, NE, to gas up and a supercell had blown up in E WY. We
watched as it headed NE then E and finally SE. As we got to Kimball, we
noted a very dark area to our N and NW as the storm was still over
20-30 miles away. When we crested the hill just north of Kimball we saw
a large low wall cloud and what we thought was a thick tube coming out
of the left side of it. Going through as many hills and valleys as we
did it was killing us not being able to confirm.... until we crested
one last hill. There it was ..... about 15 miles away a big tube that
transitioned into a big rope coming out of the left side of the newly
developed wall cloud. At first we thought it was a landspout as it
appeared to be coming either out of the side or from behind the wall
cloud. But as others have clearly shown... it was indeed a full blown
tube. We probably caught the last.....5 minutes of it clearly. But had
brief glimpses of what we thought may have been for probably a good 10
minutes. After that we were treated to some of the most amazing
structure Nature has to offer.
* Goshen County, WY tornado as seen from 8 miles NW of Kimball, NE.
*Tornado lifts, but was treated to amazing structure as this wall cloud died.
* A couple minutes later the cell strengthened and dropped a large cone funnel just to our NE.
* A new storm tries to get cranking to the W in WY, but never quite made it.
* Updraft of the La Grange storm
*New supercell develops in Cheyenne County, NE
*Flanking line feeding into the main updraft
*Vertical view of the supercell with base and slight lowering
* Lowering from the previous Goshen County storm a little later in its life cycle
* Amazing inflow banding feeding into the main updraft. This was fascinating to watch.
*Same thing, just panned a little further toward the Northwest so now you can see the updraft a little more.
* This is a short video of the picture above. It really was a sight to behold.
*Just prior to this photo the storm in Dalton, NE, really looked like it was going to produce. I believe V2 actually reported a wedge which I HIGHLY doubt. We were sitting there watching a nice lowering and rapid motions, before we got the cold wind of death from the NW and from then on out it became what we thought was an outflow dominant wind producer. We stopped just south of Dalton and snapped some pictures of this beautiful storm.
*Same as above.... it just became tornado warned again at this time.
*Not much of a lowering here, but beautiful structure.
*AWESOME Mammatus
* One last parting shot of our cell as it storms ESE toward North Platte, NE.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
* Very successful chase with amazing visibility.
* Great meeting up with Scott Bennett and Ben Holcomb near the Wyoming tornado
* We traveled down one rough road. That seemed to have 1,000 other chasers on it when we thought it would be clear.
* Some people in Sidney, Nebraska are scum bags.
* Dude's Steakhouse in Sidney though was FANTASTIC. It was great eating a celebratory dinner with Skip Talbot, Stan Rose, Jesse Risley, Mike Brady, Brandon Sullivan, Scott Bennett, and Ben Holcomb.
