High Plains Drifter

Jay, Stacie, and I targetted the area around Phillipsburg by mid-late afternoon where surface convergence appeared to be maximized. We tried to stay as far south as we could as it appeared most of Nebraska would erupt in too many storms. It turns out that indeed happened. The problem was, storms in our target area were developing out ahead of the boundary layer convergence or the remnant Pacific cold front itself. We monitored trends in radar and the sky, and it just wasn’t clear which storm was the best to intercept. Finally, around the town of Guide Rock, we stopped to let the atmosphere hopefully straighten itself out in hopes that a coherent severe storm could evolve.

We watched a small storm approach us from the southwest near Guide Rock both visually and on radar, which had up to 65 VIL at times. As the storm got closer, we could hear a faint hail roar. We continued east about 5 to 7 more miles to stay ahead of this marginally severe storm. We stopped a couple times east of Guide Rock to photograph the structure of the updraft of this storm, which was somewhat respectable. It appeared marginally supercellular-ish when it was between Guide Rock and Nelson…to the southeast of the main developing SVR line forming on the cold front. We went north on Hwy 14 and our storm became worse looking visually. We met up with Matt Crowther and Jim Leonard north of Nelson and continued east on Hwy 4.

The rest of the chase just sucked.. at least for me. Storms on the cold front began to get much better organized to our west-northwest. We decided to hang out for awhile at this location on Hwy 4 somewhere not too far west of Davenport. The light was getting low, so I decided to set the tripod up for photography. Inflow winds were gusting to about 30-40mph from the southeast… which was promising! I left my tripiod un-attended for about 20 to 30 seconds or so out of reach. You can guess what happened next. I don’t have my heavy duty Manfrotto tripod with me, but more of a lighter-weight landscape photographer’s tripod legs. Anyway, the tripod fell forward, lens-first onto the gravel road. I completely busted my 18-70mm lens. The body is okay, though thankfully. So that was about a $300 lapse in judgement not paying attention with very strong winds. It’s a good thing we are in a fairly decent sized city (and I have some supplemental cash) so I can replace this lens right away. I missed out on some decent low light structure shots as we were driving north on Hwy 81 in Southern Fillmore County…. oh well. It’s only Day 1….

Today: We had talked about chasing southeast KS last night… or at least considered the option… it’s not even 8am yet as of this time. We may blow off today, like we had originally thought and head west (after I buy my new lens) towards western Nebraska. The NAM and GFS are now throwing a bit of a curve ball at us with regards to Friday and Saturday… it’s showing more of a "dirty ridge" scenario now across the central High Plains… where enough flow could cut underneath into western KS to make things just interesting enough. Both the NAM and GFS develop storms just north of the thermal low somewhere in Northern KS on Friday. I think by heading into western Nebraska… like Scottsbluff or something… we can keep this option open… because it still isn’t exactly clear.