We are not far from Lawrence, KS where we will drop off Jay and drive
to Evan’s place for the remainder of the night. Tomorrow is a down
day. We need it. We will not chase the northern Iowa moderate risk.
After the “bust for the ages” chase yesterday, I need a mental break
from this hobby for a good couple days. I’ll relax Thursday, regroup,
run a couple errands, visit my folks perhaps, and maybe even catch the
Royals game since they have a home game tomorrow night. Then Friday,
depending on how Evan wants to finish out his vacation we will either
A) make Friday a Day 2 drive to target for Saturday or B) drive to
Dodge City so Evan can pick up his vehicle and head back to KC.
Either way, I will likely continue chasing Saturday-Monday (if Evan
decides to continue chasing) or Saturday-Tuesday if he doesn’t. It
depends on the pattern, too, of course, but there should be decent
chasing ops Saturday through Tuesday given the southwest flow pattern
and good return moisture. It will be setting up farther north,
though, especially Sunday and beyond.
–
Mike Umscheid Photography
http://gallery.underthemeso.com
mesomike@gmail.com
You can follow us on the Chase Mode page back to Larrytown. You
shouldn’t miss us, we are “MissedTheShow” on SpotterNetwork for the
remainder of the night.. LOL
–
Mike Umscheid Photography
http://gallery.underthemeso.com
mesomike@gmail.com
This clearly goes down as one of the worst in-situ tactical busts ever
for me. But wow does it look amazing from behind!
–
Mike Umscheid Photography
http://gallery.underthemeso.com
mesomike@gmail.com
You’re all probably watching spotter network wondering what the F*
we’re doing on this junk storm (SE of Loup City) northwest of the show
(Kearney to Grand Island). I’m trying to answer myself that same
question. Clearly the last two days of storm chasing haven’t been
fraught with good decisions. Intuition has led me astray two days in a
row. Pretty much sucks. Hope the rest of you are enjoying this that
are ~ 50 miles ESE of us.
–
Mike Umscheid Photography
http://gallery.underthemeso.com
mesomike@gmail.com
We decided to chase the western storm that developed instead of the
Kearney tornadic supercell. It was a tail-end charlie storm, however
it became undercut by the Kearney storm’s outflow boundary. I’m on a
streak here of poor decision making both in terms of regional
targeting and in-situ storm targeting. That’s the way it goes
sometimes, though. We will head south toward Kearney and east on I-80
to catch the backside of the tornadic supercell now near Grand Island,
but we aren’t expecting anything given we are sorely out of position.
–
Mike Umscheid Photography
http://gallery.underthemeso.com
mesomike@gmail.com
We had a tough decision to make… continue east toward the Kearney
storm or go north at Elm Creek and intercept a brand new storm north
of Cozad. The new storm north of Cozad has some incredible
razor-sharp convection on the backside and this is the tail-end
charlie storm. So we are heading north for the intercept of this one.
More later!
–
Mike Umscheid Photography
http://gallery.underthemeso.com
mesomike@gmail.com
Okay, our interesting area of congested cumulus focus to the west of
North Platte has waned, and we are now favoring east and southeast of
North Platte towrd Lexington. There is good towering cumulus growth
to our immediate east-southeast, whcih we are now beginning to drive
back under now.
–
Mike Umscheid Photography
http://gallery.underthemeso.com
mesomike@gmail.com
nice looking hard towers to our WNW or NW as we are driving north on
US-83 toward LBF. Lincoln County, NE looking pretty good right now per
obs and 1km vis.
–
Mike Umscheid Photography
http://gallery.underthemeso.com
mesomike@gmail.com
We were sitting in McCook and have repositioned north of town to get a
good view of the sky and monitor data. Incredible moisture for this
far northwest — 72 dewpoint in McCook!! (For a surface-based CAPE of
about 5,000 J/kg!) It is unusual to get lower 70s dewpoints into
southwestern Nebraska. A nice cumulus field has developed and we are
expecting aggressive convective development in a matter of an hour or
two not far from here.
–
Mike Umscheid Photography
http://gallery.underthemeso.com
mesomike@gmail.com
June 16th was a bust. We saw lightning and heard thunder, though! We did consider two targets: A) Eastern Colorado/Cheyenne Ridge where some residual moisture existed amidst fairly cool mid level temperatures. Slowly rising mid level heights, though and overall CAPE was a huge concern. B) South-central/southeastern KS. A remnant boundary from yesterday’s activity was expected to move slowly eastward. There was a huge cap concern here, but the CAPE was extreme: Around 5000 J/kg. Result: We chose (A) and we chose poorly. Nothing but showers and non severe thunder dotted our target from Sidney to Julesburg by early evening. We sat around Lodgepole, NE hoping one of the small storms would erupt into something a little more spectacular, but it wasn’t to be. We ended up calling off the chase in favor of grabbing a nice dinner in Sidney — which we did. At dinner, we saw target (B) erupt into a stationary non-tornadic supercell southeast of Wichita near Winfield. D’oh!!! That was rather painful. It’s part of chasing though. I took a couple images, but am too lazy to upload junk storm pictures to the blog right now, LOL. We are in Ogallala, NE this morning. Evan and I are debating our target for today, there are a couple of them across southern Nebraska. Stay tuned.
