Wind in the plain...
...dance, once for me.
I'm sitting in the Hampton Inn in Grand Island, NE this morning, having gotten a nice night's sleep after a surprisingly successful chase day, my first in almost two years. We met up in GRI yesterday morning, anticipating the possibility of afternoon discrete supercells in the moderately capped airmass. Unfortunately, strong southerly flow and diurnal heating had other ideas, mixing out the low level moisture pretty efficiently, and making for high based junk that quickly congealed into a severe MCS. We raced ahead of the gust front, periodically stopping to watch and take pictures as it kicked up walls of dust, before deciding to stop at a truck stop at the Aurora exit on I-80, get dinner, and let the storm overtake us. We had been there about 5 minutes when we observed a small gustnado just across the street in a field. Shortly thereafter, once the blinding rain and estimated 45 mph winds had died down, we went south a couple of miles to a gravel road to watch as the lightning filled line raced to the east, and the sun set in the west, underlighting the mammatus-covered backsheared anvil.
It looks like the next two days will be down days to enjoy our surroundings and relax, with more potential chase situations for the weekend.
Edit: I almost forgot. Today is the two year anniversary of the greatest day of my life.
Group Photo
Two Tornadoes
I'm sitting in the Hampton Inn in Grand Island, NE this morning, having gotten a nice night's sleep after a surprisingly successful chase day, my first in almost two years. We met up in GRI yesterday morning, anticipating the possibility of afternoon discrete supercells in the moderately capped airmass. Unfortunately, strong southerly flow and diurnal heating had other ideas, mixing out the low level moisture pretty efficiently, and making for high based junk that quickly congealed into a severe MCS. We raced ahead of the gust front, periodically stopping to watch and take pictures as it kicked up walls of dust, before deciding to stop at a truck stop at the Aurora exit on I-80, get dinner, and let the storm overtake us. We had been there about 5 minutes when we observed a small gustnado just across the street in a field. Shortly thereafter, once the blinding rain and estimated 45 mph winds had died down, we went south a couple of miles to a gravel road to watch as the lightning filled line raced to the east, and the sun set in the west, underlighting the mammatus-covered backsheared anvil.
It looks like the next two days will be down days to enjoy our surroundings and relax, with more potential chase situations for the weekend.
Edit: I almost forgot. Today is the two year anniversary of the greatest day of my life.
Group Photo
Two Tornadoes
