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The upper air pattern was to drool for today as a negatively tilted trough would lift across the N Plains. Unfortunately, moisture recovery was still lagging behind as shallow low to mid 60° dewpoints were quickly mixing out by mid afternoon. Looking back at my notes, there were two distinct chase targets today...southeast SD and southern NE/northern KS. The SD target had weak bulk shear, but good LLCAPEs and EHIs while much of southern NE had better shear and deeper CAPEs. I chose to play around Kearney given this and some impressive model hodographs. By mid afternoon, the cap gave way to some crisp MDT Cu shown here. |
| The first cell soon went up west of Pleasonton and remained on the tail end of some multicellular storms to its north. The base looked okay and developed some inflow tags, but widespread precip was beginning to contaminate the RFD early on...not good. This cell later merged with the line to its north. |  |
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| Things weren't shaping up as I had hoped. The drier boundary layer was resulting in strong cold pools not favorable for singular cells. I went back south to Kearney and watched these tail end cells as the dryline swept through. |  |
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Not wanting to call it a day so soon, I hopped on I-80 east to punch ahead of the line and see if anything would organize along or east of it as it neared better moisture and an intensifying LLJ. While near Aurora, I noticed a compact cell out ahead of the line explode on radar just to my south. I was later hit by its FFD with small hail and strong crosswinds. |
| I got off the interstate and had this round updraft base reveal itself before my eyes. It looked great on radar, but visually somewhat lackluster. I got back eastbound to stay ahead of this and away from the precip. |  |
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Crappy contrast on video, but this storm was now clearly rotating with a hint of a barrel shaped updraft structure here. I pulled off in York and set up to watch as this cell moved NEward. The squall line wasn't more than 10mi west of it as this point. |
| The squall line is now undercutting the rear of the meso. What a shameful display! |  |
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A small inflow tail (above and behind building) ensued and fed into the strongest core of the updraft. I got back on I-80 eastbound to keep up with this drama. |
| On radar, the rotating storm produced a cavity in the squall line's reflectivity as it was overtaken...something I haven't seen too often; though visually it was now one large linear mass. That low level inflow tail can still be seen here just above the road. |  |
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Somewhere northeast of York looking at a plume of outflow with a decent gustnado on the left. |
| A pretty sweet lightning show ended the chase with lots of anvil crawlers. Much of the lightning early on was obscured by stubborn Sc for some time. |  |
