June 13th, 2017 North Central Nebraska Supercell

Tornadoes: 0

Largest Hail: 0.5"

Highest Winds: ~60 mph

Cows: Too many

After yesterday's smashing success, following the trough home was a no-brainer. Storms were expected to fire across the northern Plains along a dryline/cold front from Nebraska into South Dakota, then eastward along a warm frontal boundary draped from eastern South Dakota into Minnesota. The warm front looked to be the real play while looking over data the night before from our hotel in western Nebraska, and we were ready to get up early to drive there, but Paul convinced us that Nebraska looked good enough and it'd get us more sleep. We eventually agreed, especially being less than desperate after what we witnessed 6 hours prior. Waking up in the morning, the setup looked pretty similar. We planned to target somewhere in north-central or northeastern Nebraska.

Observed sig tor parameter at 21z on June 13th. An easy way to visualize that the warm front was the place to be.

Observed OAX sounding at 00z displays prominently the primary concern with targeting this far south: dewpoint depressions. The dews themselves weren't anything to scoff at, but temps skyrocketed into the low 90s, bringing LCL heights well above 1000 meters. Also, low level turning could've been better, and the warm front well to our north helped with that up that way.

SPC went with 10% tornado probs up near the triple point and along the warm front. Further down the dryline/cold front, they still were generous enough to throw us a 5%:

After leaving the hotel, we were in no hurry to get to the target area. We stopped at a Perkins somewhere off I-80 in central Nebraska (don't remember what town), where we saw a WeatherNation liveshot being done. Finishing up eating (and after Paul bought a whole pie), we pressed on towards Taylor, NE, where we stopped at a gas station briefly to look over data. A Tornado Watch was issued while we were there:

We headed north of town, racing to meet a line of developing cells. We had our eye on one in particular, and pulled onto a back road to get a better look as it intensified:

Matt and Paul report their findings from the top of a hill:

Prickly pear cactus I almost stepped on walking up the hill. I know we have some that grow wild back in Illinois, but this is the first time I've encountered any in the wild. They're probably incredibly common in the Plains.

We kept our eyes on the northernmost cell while also watching a cell blossoming to its south. Both looked promising. The northern one looked the best, though, so we continued following it. We got onto a sandy back road to follow it east when it crossed the road. At some point it went tornado warned. We all had little to no data, so we only got a radar frame to load every 10 or 15 minutes. We got a view of the base that was quickly obscured by RFD precip. There was a dramatic scene on the backside of the gust front, however:

We would never catch up with the now hopelessly HP storm, so we set our sights on the southern cell we'd been watching. We wound our way down the extremely sketchy road network featured in that part of Nebraska, and holy cow it was bad:

(Yes, I hate myself too for that pun).

The cow incident is probably the funniest moment I've had while chasing. Instead of moving out of the way, they thought we had food and instead gathered around.

Finally through the rather unconventional traffic jam, we were able to get in great position to view the southern cell. This storm was much more picturesque. It was largely precip-free in its rear flank, and put on a bit of a structure show:

We sat in this spot for about 10 minutes before we had to move out of the way in fear that it may try and do something tornadic. It didn't, but our escape route ended pretty abruptly when the road network literally dead-ended. We were well enough out of the way, but our pursuit of the storm was done. We got some breathtaking backside views as it departed to the northeast:

A few minutes later, we finally got our tornado! Or, well, our dinky mid-level funnel that we could zoom way in on and claim was a tornado.

We departed the crappy sand back roads, taking about 20 minutes to arrive at any pavement again. We began our long drive towards Council Bluffs, where we'd be spending the night. On the way, we began catching up with the storms we'd been left behind by, and encountered some gorgeous mammatus:

We eventually needed to get gas, and one now-famous small town was in our path:

We were fittingly in the middle of the MCS that all the storms congealed into as we got into town. It was Isaac's turn to get gas, so it was pretty hysterical watching him struggle through the high wind and torrential rain. Taking a look around, everything that wasn't an empty lot was brand new. Not a surprising sight for a recently tornado-stricken town. We left Pilger and got to Council Bluffs, where we checked into our hotel and then went out and ate some BBQ at 1 AM.

A fun, albeit somewhat disappointing chase. We'd blown off the better target for a more convenient one, and missed out on a number of brief (but photogenic) tornadoes in South Dakota, along with one monster in Minnesota, not at all far from where we'd seen a tornado less than a year prior. We did catch some neat storms, and had a career success 24 hours ago, so it wasn't that big of a bust.

SPC Storm Reports:

Cows are funny. The road network in north central Nebraska is not.