5/30/2011 - Nebraska Unzip

Monday was a fairly straight-forward chase -- target the triple point and watch the convection continually unzip the cap along a stationary front stretching from the triple point low in Nebraska to another low in South Dakota. The directional shear was essentially nonexistent, which made for unimpressive storm structures. With strong isallobaric forcing, the atmosphere was deeply mixed providing for extremely strong southerly winds filled with dust in the warm sector. Visibility was also minimal thanks to the dust plumes coming off the agricultural rich area of the eastern Sandhills. We targeted Broken Bow, which verified well. We spent a long time watching convection continually develop and mature near Anselmo and race northeast into a nonexistent road network. Eventually the Pacific front overtook the triple point and the storms quickly accelerated east. We stayed ahead of them as we stair-stepped down to Kearney. We "tested" a few of the tornado warned cells west of this area, but found nothing but extremely strong outflow (gusting to an estimated 65 mph while we were out of the vans one time -- ouch!) and lots and lots of impressive gustnadoes, which many folks incorrectly reported as tornadoes. Overall, it was nice to finally see some storms after fighting a nasty cap the past few days. Tuesday was an off day -- we took in an Omaha Storm Chasers ballgame, complete with pregame tailgating.

I have a number of animated gifs illustrating the storms of the day available here.