Storm Chase Details
Chase Date: June 29, 2014
Miles Logged: 929
States Chased: NE, IA
Tornadoes Witnessed: 2
Severe Risks: SPC Outlooks
Chase Recap:
Jon and I both were not very sold on Sunday’s setup, but after 2 blue sky busts in a row we decided to try. We stayed in Salina on Saturday night and headed east and north on Sunday. Initial target was near Marysville, KS, so we stopped in Abilene, KS to check out the Eisenhower presidential library.
Marysville Kansas
Once in Marysville. I examined the 18Z Topeka sounding. After seeing the capping on the sounding, I decided we probably needed to move further north in Nebraska or even Iowa.
We headed north out of Marysville up to Beatrice and then to Thomas and Nebraska City. A storm had really started to fire north of Omaha near Blair and we took off up I-29 towards it.
Storm north of Omaha
The storm came into view north of Omaha and we first got onto it near Missouri Valley, IA. It had decent structure and was showing good signs of healthy inflow. For whatever reason, shortly after that it seemed to almost become outflow dominant, showing a shelf cloud presentation. I theorize that the storm may have fallen off of the outflow boundary which was evident on visible satellite.
We continued east and the storm seemed to cycle again, with a less shelfy look. We were seeing some striations on the storm as it slowly rotated.
Traffic gets bad
As we continued east on highway F58/296th Street, we eventually witnessed a very brief and small funnel which apparently touched down briefly. We continued east until US59 where the storm really started falling apart again. The traffic by this point was insane, with a huge line of cars coming down F58. We decided to bail north to Harlan and then east into the core to Kimballton before dropping back south in front of everyone again.
Heading Home
The storm had fallen apart, so we started heading towards home in Norman. Another severe storm was just to our west, so we decided to go after it. It was mostly on the way home anyway. As we navigated through some dirt/gravel roads, we saw the rotation on the storm starting to tighten. I was near Portsmouth at this point. We got up to 220th street and took it east where we witnessed our second tornado of the day, this time with corn stalks flying in the air and a quick vortex fully condensing. Barn parts flew across the road and into the field next to us.
This would be the coolest thing we’d see all weekend and would follow the storm back to Harlan before giving up shortly east of town and heading back to Norman. We got back to Norman at 4:30 am