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.
Nothing new to report as we hung around Lodgepole for awhile to see if a storm would emerge from the showers. It didn’t happen so we are blowing off the chase. We will drive to Ogalalla after dinner for the night
(Sent by Mike’s Alltel Blackberry smartphone)
(Sent by Mike’s Alltel Blackberry smartphone)
Monitoring some showers with little vertical development to our west. We are hoping they will gain more verticality, but so far not much to report from near Lodgepole NE
(Sent by Mike’s Alltel Blackberry smartphone)
Afternoon update. We just left Wray, CO as I type and we are noticing
a congested Cu field developing along the WY-CO border and adjacent
far southwest NE Panhandle along the Cheyenne Ridge. Unfortunately,
the moisture situation is rather paltry, with just 48to 50 degree
dewpoints from Sidney to Akron. Initial storms have already formed
just east of Cheyenne which are moving east. More devleopment may
occur farther east along the Cheyenne Ridge. We are heading north now
toward Julesburg. It will be a very nice treat if the atmosphere can
produce a high-based supercell today given the CAPE concerns.
–
Mike Umscheid Photography
http://gallery.underthemeso.com
mesomike@gmail.com
After successfully using a Frisbee to enhance low =
level
helicity in SW KS yesterday, we figured we’d try our luck out in =
Colorado
– somewhere. In response to yesterday’s supercells and =
long-tracked
MCS, moisture has been shunted into SE Kansas and Oklahoma. Has anyone =
ever
seen a photogenic storm with 4000 J/kg of CAPE and low 70F dewpoints? =
No. So we’re
going to pray for a couple nice isolated supercells within the residual =
moisture
over NE Colorado, cooler temps aloft, and a nice jet streak coming out =
of the
southwest upper trough. At the very least, we’re in position for =
tomorrow’s
Nebraska show. As we say in the business, stay tuned for later updates =
and
possible warnings. — Evan
HP-Supercell Structure Spearville to Kinsley, KS — Beautiful Mammatus at sunset Pratt, KS — Astronomical twilight storms near Haviland, KS
Not much time for a detailed report given time constraints (we have to hit the road again). It was another fine day of storm photography on the 15th. We followed the HP-supercell that first initiated northwest of Dodge City. It became a beast of an HP supercell as it tracked from Spearville to Offerle to Kinsley as we followed it along Hwy 50. At Kinsley, we headed south and continued to photograph the structure from southeast of Kinsley to Trousdale to Hopewell to Pratt. We broke off the storm at Pratt then headed south toward Medicine Lodge taking a scenic way home. After a pit stop in Medicine Lodge, we noticed a new storm developed north of Greensburg. We retrated our steps back to Pratt on Hwy 281. When we reached Pratt, a beautiful sky full of vivid mammatus greeted us. We sat at a farm road just west of Hwy 281 a couple miles northwest of Pratt to photograph this atmospheric spectacle. Just phenomenal! After sunset, we drove back west toward Dodge City when another cluster of small storms formed with intracloud lightning. The lightning illuminated structure was quite nice. I took advantage of the low light capability of my Nikon setup (D3 + 14-24mm f/2.8 lens). Results were very good. Here are three images from this day:
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