Robin Lorenson and I photographed three different supercells across southwestern Nebraska. Our target was Ogallala to Sidney to Julesburg, which allowed us to hang around Ogallala for the better part of the afternoon along with Matt Crowther, Scott Bell, and Dave Blanchard. The first supercell we photographed was a high based well-sculpted “cinnamon swirl” supercell updraft as it tracked along I-80 from Brule to just northwest of North Platte before weakening. Robn and I stuck with this a little too long, while Matt Crowther and company broke off sooner in favor of new development back toward Julesburg, CO. Matt’s decision to break off that initial storm paid off, as they managed to get fantastic images of the 2nd supercell that tracked south of Ogallala. Robin and I caught the last glimpses of the supercell structure just after sunset from a viewing point a couple miles east-southeast of Elsie, NE. Matt and Scott joined us at this location and we watched a 3rd supercell track basically along the same track as supercell #2. There was just enough remaining twilight for my Nikon D3 to take advantage of, so I set it up on the tripod and shot continuous 5-second exposures of lightning illuminated structure… beautiful bell-shaped updraft with a wonderful convective top above. This was just a beautiful sight!! A very rewarding day on the high plains with the storms essentially to ourselves as all the other chasers targeted much farther east with little in the way of results.
